fascism
Dear friends,
I’ve heard a few (bad) hot takes on US politics lately and this has really got my hackles up about fascism. We need a common literacy to understand that low-grade sociopathy, manipulative bullshit, and lateral violence are the same things played out in our social worlds, work lives, and in politics. The political class is not smart, they are not strategic, and they are most certainly manipulating you. So let’s build some literacy around narratives that let (small l) liberals off the hook as fascism builds complicity. We need a theorist, and as you know, we’re big into Gramsci in these parts, we’ll start there.
Gramsci gave a poignant analysis of fascism’s rise in Italy. He did something no other historical materialist scholar had done to that point – provided a devastatingly accurate framework for understanding his political moment – and the value of this has not diminished, despite new technologies and manipulation. Writing from one of Mussolini’s prisons, Gramsci identified how fascism emerges not as a sudden rupture but through a gradual process of cultural and political transformation. Later, this came to be known as manufactured consent. The bourgeoisie, facing crisis and unable to maintain control through consent alone, increasingly turn to coercion while maintaining a facade of democratic legitimacy. This process involves what Gramsci called “transformismo”. This heralds systematic absorption and neutralisation of potential opposition forces, particularly among the educated classes who might otherwise provide leadership to counter-hegemonic movements. The “educated liberals” are convinced that fascism isn’t so bad – it’s not coming for them… yet.
We have seen, particularly over the past few months, this same process playing out with frightening similarity. The ruling class, facing multiple crises of legitimacy – from climate collapse to grotesque inequality – increasingly abandons even the pretence of democratic governance, maintaining just enough electoral theatre to claim legitimacy. The absorption of supposedly “progressive” parties into this project, with Labor in Australia and Democrats in the US serving as willing accomplices in the march toward fascism, perfectly exemplifies Gramsci’s concept of transformismo. These parties, while occasionally offering a veneer of mild social reforms (never enacted “oh after you elect us again we’ll take climate action”), serve only to legitimise the rightward ratcheting of acceptable political discourse while preventing the emergence of genuine alternatives.
Understanding the “ratchet effect”, which I’ve mentioned in passing, is a useful tool for our toolbelt. It describes simply the mechanism by which ostensibly opposed political parties work in concert to continually move politics rightward. In the US, the Republicans push extreme positions while Democrats offer token resistance, or a more palatable version of the same policy, before eventually just adopting slightly moderated versions of the same policies anyway. In Australia, we see this dynamic between the Liberal-National Coalition and Labor, while in the UK it manifests between Tories and Labour. The pattern is depressingly consistent: right-wing parties introduce increasingly extreme measures, “opposition” parties offer performative resistance while ultimately accepting the new normal, and the cycle repeats with the goalposts shifted further right. In just the last week we’ve seen the Australian senate introduce legislation to ban abortion, and the only party working to counter this is the Greens – here, as an example, we can see how right-wing extremism is fostered, and because Labor offer the (small l) liberals a sense of security, the issue is brushed aside as “not your problem”.
This ratchet operates differently across these countries due to their distinct electoral systems, but the end result is incredibly similar. In Australia, compulsory voting and ranked choice theoretically should provide more opportunity for genuine progressive alternatives to emerge. However, the combination of media monopoly and the major parties’ shared commitment to capital ensures that even these more democratic mechanisms ultimately serve the rightward march. Indeed, lies deliberately perpetuated by the ALP make the populace believe that they waste their vote by voting for the Greens in this country – patently untrue. The US’s first-past-the-post system makes this process even more pronounced, while the UK sits somewhere between these extremes.
The differences between these countries’ voting systems, though, show us how formal democratic mechanisms are rendered meaningless within a hegemonic system. Regardless of how the political system is organised, the vanguarding of capital takes priority – if the citizens are rowdy then the Labor party holds the solutions, if the citizens are placid then the Liberals come in to intensify production and exploitation – it is that simple. Australia’s compulsory voting and ranked choice system, while superior on paper, operates within the same constraining framework of media manipulation and manufactured consent. In this way while it is possible for grassroots action and collective education to transform our political environment – axe student debt, improve welfare initiatives, fix working conditions – the power of divisive and hateful hegemonic narratives empowers the LNP to target women’s rights, rather than for the discourse to be about reforms that make life better for the 99% (while inconveniencing capitalists who control the narrative). The US’s nakedly anti-democratic electoral college and first-past-the-post voting makes the system’s failures more obvious – and, apparently, paralysing in the context of a handful of actual voters, in spite of the Democrats being obviously the only choice this election just gone – but the end result differs little beyond speed. In all cases, the formal mechanisms of democracy serve primarily to legitimise (fascist) decisions already made by capital. Those decisions, as discussed, always harm the 99%.
The role of traditional media in this process is important – fundamentally. Murdoch’s near-monopoly in Australia represents perhaps the most extreme version, but the pattern holds across all these countries. Corporate media serves to normalise increasingly extreme right-wing positions while demonising even mild social democratic reforms as dangerous radicalism. The genius of this system lies in how it maintains the appearance of debate while systematically narrowing the range of acceptable discourse – codifying the ratcheting to the right through the continued repetition of talking points which make these reforms seem like a true part of the “conversation”. We shouldn’t even be talking about the right of women to healthcare – this should be an ipso iure protection fundamental to any “civilised” nation. Alas, Murdoch (and Dutton, Albo) and their ilk manufacture these damaging narratives to ensure their own power – and cement capitalism as ontic reality (like good servants to their billionaire masters).
The media’s role in protecting fascist governments while they strip away civil liberties follows a consistent pattern: first, downplay the significance of each individual regression of rights; second, present these changes as necessary responses to manufactured crises [1]; and finally, demonise any opposition as threatening some nebulous concept of “security” or “stability” – playing to workers fears about job losses, “migrants” and other manufactured concerns that only play to the “economy”. This process operates with particular efficiency in Australia, where media concentration makes coordinated messaging easier to maintain. Moreover, with social media regulations in this country, the sharing of news, political opinion, and thought has become so tightly controlled that the traditional media has secured its place as the “only source of truth”.
Social media, here, also has an important role to play – as an accelerant to hate. Not so much has it created new problems as supercharged existing ones. The algorithmic amplification of extreme content, combined with the erosion of shared reality through filter bubbles, creates perfect conditions for fascist radicalisation. We see it with young white men, vilified minorities and so many communities – hateful and vitriolic “truth tellers” like Andrew Tate emerge as celebrity to assure young men it is okay to rape – after all, the Republicans are enacting Project 2025. In addition, foreign state actors, while real, serve as convenient scapegoats for a system that is fundamentally designed to fragment and confuse working class consciousness. Yes, foreign states like Russian harness AI to drive division in international elections for their own political benefit. Of course, it would be naive to think the US wasn’t doing the same – imperialism flows from all these nations. But AI bots on Twitter are just the latest in ensuring the hegemony – and profit-driven engagement algorithms make this work possible, thanks Zucc.
The proliferation of fake news and conspiracy theories through social media represents the “logical” endpoint of a system designed to maximise engagement at any cost. At least to neoliberals with no concept of ethics, morals, or human decency. When combined with already poor media literacy – which in this country is only getting worse with phones banned in schools, and incoming legislation to prevent anyone under 17 from accessing social media in any format. Concomitant with the systematic degradation of critical thinking skills in education. Here the Australian Government, largely controlled by the Labor party, have been responsible for breeding conditions which are the perfect milieu for fascist ideas to proliferate rapidly while genuine analysis cannot find purchase. Thanks, again, Albo.
So what could be done? Let’s look to those who fought fascism before. Returning to Gramsci’s concept of counter-hegemony is vital, but requires some tweaking for our current moment. The traditional focus on building alternative institutions and cultural formations must now contend with algorithmic suppression and the accelerated pace of digital media. Literally not only must we fight for new ways of working, but fight even harder to have those ways heard and recognised. I propose, here, some key principles for construction of a counter-hegemony:
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Build genuine class consciousness that transcends the artificial divisions promoted through identity politics while acknowledging the real intersectional impacts of oppression. Teach your neighbours.
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Develop alternative media platforms and networks that can operate outside the constraining logic of engagement metrics and algorithmic amplification. Look no further than the Fediverse.
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Reassert the role of analytical thinking, media literacy, and engagement with transformative social science in Education, particularly among young people who have grown up in the social media ecosystem. Don’t deny them access to social platforms, teach them proper engagement.
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Maintain focus on the material basis of exploitation while building solidarity across artificial divisions. The binary division of the 99% and 1% is a powerful narrative. Your suffering is because of Elon Musk is a simple narrative to reinforce.
Traditional media, particularly in Australia, makes this kind of thinking and, importantly, action challenging – not impossible. The very contradictions that drive the system toward fascism also create opportunities for counter-hegemonic organisation. The key is developing ways to bypass traditional media gatekeepers while building genuine class consciousness and solidarity. The pathway forward requires simultaneously working within existing systems – even if only for the purposes of subsistence forced on us by this exploitative system – while building alternative structures and consciousness. This doesn’t mean accepting the logic of electoralism or falling for reformist traps – something we must all be mindful of, but rather using every available tool to build working class power while maintaining clear analysis of the system’s fundamental antagonisms.
As crisis continues to deepen – whether through climate collapse, economic instability, attacking fundamental human rights or the system’s own internal contradictions – opportunities for genuine transformation continue to emerge. Every. Single. Day. The question is whether we’ll have built the consciousness and organisational capacity to utilise them when they do. This requires patient, if occasionally depressing, work now to build understanding and solidarity while maintaining revolutionary horizon beyond the false choices offered by capitalist “democracy”.
In solidarity,
Aidan
Fraser, N. (2022). Cannibal Capitalism: How our System is Devouring Democracy, Care, and the Planetand What We Can Do About It. Verso Books. ↩︎
Dear friends,
It is happening here. The polarisation, the extremism, growing xenophobia and racism, anti-intellectualism, hatred, violence and climate-denialism. These are not “forthcoming” ideas in the Australian context, but rather actively festering features of contemporary society. Because of the way content is conglomerated under a singular social media corporation, lots of the proliferation of this kind of thinking is hidden. Algorithmic systems tailor content specifically for the viewer, and they deliberately cultivate extremist views – because extremist views garner more attention. In an “artificially intelligent system” trained on the KPIs of the CEO, it matters not if hate speech, right-wing extremism, and general villainy are promoted. All that matters is the cultivation of “attention”. As the yogi influencers like to put it: “Attention is currency”.
The republican party appealed to the American voting base on two key fronts: they told compelling lies about the significance of the economy and the role of the “others” in preventing its flourishing and they spoke the same hateful language that their supporters consume exclusively online and via fox news. The combination of hegemonic forces, here, manufacturing consent for fascism is a powerful combination. And this is the same combination that the Liberal-National coalition leverage every election in Australia. Look no further than the anti-abortion rhetoric of the LNP at the Queensland state election – and if you were kidding yourself into thinking that Australia is “more sophisticated” and “it couldn’t happen here” you are dead wrong. Australia’s particular cultural configuration around politics means that extremism festers far more quietly than it does in the states, but the increasing prevalence of vitriolic, hate filled, and vile bullshit from the LNP will attract mass voter support.
The problem is, and this is the big one, that the economy is fake. It is a deliberately abstract construct that distracts people from the reality of their exploitation. We discussed this in depth in the last post on mind reader [1]. The source of oppression of working people is capitalism, the capitalists, and their political subclass. The cultural institutions – the (social) media companies, schools and universities, and religious organisations play active yet ever “apolitical” roles in re-perpetuating exploitation and expropriation as natural and necessary. The masking of this – the exploitation of working people – as the “elite” is a cover for fearmongering or racist or nihilistic politicians latch onto to exploit. We know, as a global force of billions, that something is very wrong with our social order. It’s just that the system was designed from the start to prevent access to the knowledge of why the system is so broken. Those cultural institutions? They both inform and reinforce the views espoused by the ruling class. In the classical neoliberal system in the west, for middle-class white-ish able-bodied cisgender hetero kids, the journey goes something like this: born into relative comfort → educated through capitalist epistemology → university graduate → employment in culturally reinforcing institutions and businesses, with moderate if meagre reward affording housing security → the wife stays home looking after babies, and around the cycle goes. Of course, over time, the endless growth demanded by capitalism has eroded parts of that cycle, and with the inherent massive inequality, sexism, ableism and so on required to continue accumulation for the 1% division becomes a necessary tool to keep driving capitalism headlong towards the cliff.
Here, and you can guess where I’m going, the treacherous Australian Labor Party enters the scene. Simultaneously deeply involved in bringing neoliberalism to Australia, and allying with the unions to disempower any genuine revolutionary movement. As with the Democrats in the US, the Labor party is supported by the elite as the veneer of social progress, while true transformation (read: fascism) is supported by the more extreme position of the LNP or Republicans. The ALP’s role in this political theatre is critical to the perpetuation of the status quo. Noting that the status quo is ever more objectionable to anyone with a value system of compassion. While positioning themselves as the “progressive” option, they actively participate in the rightward march of Australian politics. Like the Republican/Democrat ratchet system, ours is similarly pernicious – and worse, because people still think that Labour represents the unions – but these unions only represent bourgeois leadership, not the worker. It doesn’t take much to judge them on their actions – from supporting genocidal regimes abroad to implementing increasingly draconian domestic surveillance measures, from funding military expansion while driving hate for China through stripping workers of their rights while professing a “right to disconnect” (recognition stolen from the Greens) the ALP demonstrate their fundamental allegiance to capital over human wellbeing. The party’s willingness to eject members who speak against genocide illustrates how thoroughly they have abandoned even the pretence of left-wing politics in favour of maintaining the status quo for their capitalist masters.
Ideological “flexibility” of supposedly left-wing parties is part of the theatrics that supports an appearance of democracy under contemporary capitalism. As the contradictions of capital become more apparent – through climate catastrophe, growing inequality, and social breakdown – the political apparatus works harder to maintain hegemonic control. Here, parties like the ALP and Democrats serve offer superficial reforms which fail to connect with working people because all they do is perpetuate the same violent, broken, and dispossessive system that brought us here in the first place. While “moderate” parties exist we will never see a challenge to capitalist relations emerge. And currently we have a moderate party led by a fascist, an extreme-right party led by a fascist, and then the Greens whose political messaging fails to align with the workers because they are routinely denied fair representation in the extreme-right wing media duopoly and social media algorithm. Between deliberate intensification of deployment of identity politics, stripped of any class analysis, and the march towards ever more property owning, shareholding, and other economics scum – the ALP, LNP, as with the Democrats and Republicans only aid fragmentation of working class solidarity leaving structural power relations untouched. It’s just one party is much, much, worse in both instances for human rights – particularly at the margins.
Fundamentally, the media landscape, dominated by the extreme right-wing Murdoch empire in Australia, plays a crucial role in manufacturing consent for the ratchet. Ensuring that the LNP can move politics, issues, identity, and so on to the right, ever distracting from the crushing destruction of capitalism, and positioning any real opposition (read: the Greens) as bourgeois they move the goalposts time and again. Through careful curation of “acceptable” discourse, they – and their distant social media cousins – present fascism as a reasonable response to social problems created by capitalism itself. The algorithmic amplification of extremist content concomitantly accelerates these normalised, socialised, perspectives and the holistic process of creating filter bubbles of hatred and division for every single individual in the nation becomes par for the course. Yep, digital acceleration of fascist ideology builds on decades of traditional media conditioning – cheery.
What makes this situation particularly dangerous is how the appearance of choice, between Labor and Liberal, masks the fundamental unity of their commitment to capital behind supposedly differing social reforms. While they may differ on social issues or, perhaps more accurately, the speed at which they wish to implement reactionary policies, both major parties are fully committed to maintaining the extractive, exploitative system that is destroying human and ecological wellbeing. Here, political theatre replacing religion as the opium of the masses, as individualised AI generated slop directs the micro-political battles of fake social media forums flooded with Russian State actors under the guise of “parliamentary democracy”. Don’t get me wrong, the ALP is a better option than the LNP, just as the Democrats are better than the Republicans, but to suggest either party offers any genuine solutions to the 99% is a farce. Reductionist commentators on “both sides” of belonging politics seek only to legitimate this false choice, preventing more radical alternatives from emerging, and maintaining capitalist hegemony – and in cases such as the US, and increasingly in Australia, the rapid installation of fascism over democracy as modus operandi for maintaining the status quo.
As climate collapse accelerates and inequality reaches unprecedented levels, we can expect this drift toward fascism to intensify. People are being told the reason they can’t afford to feed or home themselves is Albanese’s failures in “the economy” – at the same time, their social media feeds show them how migrants and queer people are personally responsible for that situation. The hate, anger and intentional division of the human population of this planet driving Meta’s share-prices ever higher – and “attention is currency” paralleling “line must go up” as the drivers of global destruction, heat death, and the end of any semblance of care for one another. A social contract? Nah, social media, mate. As the ruling class abandon liberal democratic pretences in favour of more direct forms of control and violence, fearing an anti-capitalist awakening amongst a slightly better educated populous, the ALP’s active participation in stripping education, driving hate and division, and attacking worker’s rights only enable the cycle to continue and amplify. Moreover, through expanded surveillance powers, anti-protest laws, and the criminalisation of dissent, we have seen the extremist groundwork laid for overtly authoritarian governance from the LNP at our next federal elections. Unless the working class can develop genuine solidarity and class consciousness to resist this trajectory, Australia’s inevitable march toward fascism will only accelerate. With Albo’s commitment to the United States of Australia, sorry, “working with trump” [2] in a paramilitary alliance we can genuinely see the failings of Australian democracy. Joy.
With a sense of foresight and uncertainty,
Aidan.
Dear friends,
Another day in hell. In the last fortnight we have seen: the ALP eject an elected member over their relatively limp anti-genocide stance [1], the rapid increase in cost of education visas [2], the taxation of higher degrees by research [3], and many policy and party platform transformations to reconfigure the once upon a time centrist party as the firmly right wing player.
Where does the fascism start? If we momentarily set aside the deliberately genocidal and narcissistic behaviour of the Australian Government and its ALP rulers, we have just as recently borne witness to the systematic decimation of higher education – in the long run. Education in this country is government controlled. Allegedly public schools and universities are run for the public interest. In reality this has always been the hegemony’s interest. While higher education, in particular, has been seen as a relative bastion of liberal thought, over the past 30 years in Australia, there has been an acceleration towards corporatised, privatised, and conservative thought and decision making.
Importantly, the “liberal thought” of higher education in Australia has always been a centrist, socially and economically conservative, and static status quo. This enabled higher education institutions to avoid neoliberalism longer than other institutions, not because they were special, but because in this country they were already functioning under managerialist, cost-saving, and conservative models. This was brought by the ALP in decades past, unlike how neoliberalism arrived in the rest of the world [4]. The intensification of crack-downs on research funding for the arts, humanities, social sciences, and, frankly, anything the conservative Minister for Education doesn’t like was a hallmark of the Liberal-National coalition. While this intervention was allegedly reversed relatively early in the ALP’s most recent term in government, these two most recent developments only show a re-commitment to the rapid deskilling of the working class due to ripple affects.
As recently as last week the NTEU, the union for higher education, and CAPA, the peak body for postgraduate students, called for raising the wage of research students to the minimum wage. Currently, Australian postgraduate research students are paid approximately $30,000 per year – tax free. This approximately $14 per hour wage is supposed to enable transformative science, radical thought, new frontiers in social transformation, and to up-skill workers for the next generation of higher education - as well as covering the cost of living. Instead, the government has decided to tax this stipend, in addition to preventing more than 7.5 hours of work per week (or 30% of the stipend, whichever comes first).
Australian higher education has long been wholly dependent on international students to sustain itself. Importantly, while this is financially irresponsible, this is the status quo in higher education. For domestic students to be educated, the university sector requires international student enrolments, this is because of the exorbitant fees. In another regressive decision from the past week, the ALP has also announced the almost doubling of the international study visa cost. This deters international students from Australian institutions, and even those who are currently enrolled may reconsider returning for study in 2025.
Atop funding cuts, massive indexation on study debt for domestic students, previous policy which continues to influence study flows towards “professions”, and other tax disincentives for institutions, donors, and so on, the financial situation of most universities is now dire. After a massive downturn during COVID-19 lockdowns, the sector has been incredibly slow to recover. With these latest developments amounting to punching down by government on higher education and students simultaneously.
Okay – this brings us to fascism.
There has been a clear repositioning of the ALP from the so called centre-left party, connected integrally to unions, to occupying the centre-right, and now the right – and, as illustrated above, completely disconnected from the worker. We have seen the Liberal-National Coalition progress further to the extreme right, and their ‘retreat’ or continued loss of popularity with the majority populous. Now, drawing on their tactics, the ALP seeks to reposition itself as the party for the capitalists – millenials, boomers, never mind, this is distinctively class warfare. From a prime minister with a massive housing portfolio, who could expect pro-renter housing policy? From a foreign minister with an ongoing relationship with Israel, who could expect anti-genocidal policy? The bourgeois hegemony of the ALP now rivals the Howard era in contemptibility.
Recent propaganda from the ALP’s MPs and candidates indicates copying the LNP’s homework directly. Investment in churches, increased funding in private schools, reducing tax (for the 1%), individualist claims in individualist times. Inwardly, past the propaganda, is a continued and deeply economically conservative party whose financial interests lie with property developers, investors, corporate CEOs, and other plutocrats. Socially, the ALP stands on the side of genocide, so I do not believe I need to say more about their positionality.
With this divestment from even a ‘liberal’ centrist educational system, which I will at this juncture point out continues in its hegemonic control by the government from preschool through graduate education, we are now seeing the ALP stamp their mark as the anti-intellectual part of the country. A populist movement not seen in left-wing (populist) politics in the anglosphere. Indeed, the right gut and disfigure education the world over, and when it talks like a duck, acts like a duck, and makes regressive policy decisions like a duck, it’s probably a duck – sorry, fascist. With higher education being on the chopping block it is a matter of time before the future of this country becomes increasingly narrow and devastatingly less class-conscious. The latter was already fading away beyond belief, particularly given the dire state of a corrupt, narcissistic, profiteering, yet underfunded and radically unequal, higher education system. The future does not look bright.
We need an education system that fosters class consciousness. We need a curriculum, from preschool to higher education, that enables positive social transformation. We need more equality, acceptance, and communal spirit to push back the ravages of unchecked neoliberal capitalism. Instead, we are seeing an increasingly desperate focus by governments and political figures on the de-skilling and anti-intellectualising of the populous and constant undermining of those in vague positions to be able to create a better future together. Such is the rise of global fascism.
We can but hope for a French-style left-jerk in the next election, but the Murdoch press are so hellbent on authoritarianism that they still back the LNP in the face of a “nuclear overlord”. The Greens as the last remaining centre-left party in Australia are in dire straits. The rhetoric that the Greens are the ‘radical left’ is so ingrained in the populous by the ALP, LNP, and Murdoch monopoly, that the average citizen still thinks the ALP represents a centrist position. This is patently untrue – fascism is here, and it wears red (again).
In solidarity,
Aidan
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/article/2024/jul/06/fatima-payman-quits-labor-party-palestine-voters-base ↩︎
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/article/2024/jul/07/international-student-cap-visa-fees-increase-albanese-government ↩︎
https://www.campusreview.com.au/2024/07/taxing-part-time-postgrad-study-strange-punitive-measure/ ↩︎
Humphrys, E. (2019). How Labour built neoliberalism: Australia’s accord, the labour movement and the neoliberal project. Brill. ↩︎
Dear friends,
I have been thinking about negative distraction since our last idea. Essentially stemming from the notion of capital’s necessary divisive nature for its own reproduction, negative distraction – I’m calling it – is another in the many tentacled squid of class divisive praxes instilled by the ruling class. Previously we talked about division across the class line, vis. proles vs capitalists or civil vs ruling, and how intersections create vertices of additional exploitation and expropriation. Negative distraction, in a sense, is a political theatre of this boundary.
Let’s take the right’s use of identity as an example here. For political society, in particular, drawing from our comrade Gramsci [1], identity is a performance to an ends. For example, we might consider Bob Katter in Australian politics a performed identity of “country” – an eccentric with radical ideas, conservative ideas, but radical and introduced in the performative nature of political society: “But I ain't spending any time on it because in the meantime, every three months, a person is torn to pieces by a crocodile in north Queensland” [2]. This performative identity lends itself to a political message, a particular cause, and a rather transparent configuration of politics in society.
Naturally there are a great number of these performances which are more nuanced than a political “cowboy”. Regardless, however, of what we perceive in these performances, they are winning votes and enabling those performers a platform to influence legislature and direction in civil society. Without degrading into level upon level of nuance, if we understand that capital controls political decision making, the performative nature of politics enables a theatre to perplex, rile up, or otherwise befuddle civil society. None of these performances are harmless, and they are nearly universal in the political arena. There are next to no “straight shooters” in the political sphere – simply because the hegemony of “politics” is to perform.
Pop down the stack a few layers and we can see this theatre affect the micro. Here’s where microaggressions are born an expansion from their original use in race relations [3], the class divide now leverages these aggressions to enable negative distraction. Rather than focus on a critique of, for example, Dutton’s nuclear policy, the capital-media hegemony in Australia turns individuals against one another by amplifying divisive narratives over nuclear use, waste, storage, regulation and so on. Here the proletariat is drawn against lines of political theatre: “are you pro nuclear?” For those passionate on issues on any area of the political spectrum, this creates a negative distraction: “of course I’m pro nuclear, it is the only way to produce a stable base load of power” (fallacy upon fallacy). Rather than critique political society we are directed to absorb ruling class rhetoric as identity.
In a more sinister and capably deployed version of this practice, Queer rights are frequently weaponised as an intersectional negative distraction. We know that queer humans, across the board, are deeply discriminated against by the vast majority of “other” humans, and the weaponisation of queer rights (i.e. where these rights are not perceived as human rights) leads to wanton destruction of human life (literally). From bisexual erasure, through anti-trans activism, -human rights- are regularly undermined for political theatre. In this instance, as opposed to nuclear power by example, is a violent and destructive negative distraction at great cost to life.
A recent “controversy” (i.e. a right wing politician attacking a celebrity queer ally) is a perfect example of a negative distraction [4]. Taking a brief meta-look at this issue, as par for the course celebrities deride political decision-makers on a broad range of issues. From housing to aid programs, arts funding to disaster recovery, and so on. This occurs on both sides of issues and aids the political theatre at large, bringing celebrity attention to political theatre as an extension of the capital-media hegemony – literally dramatising politics for attention, distraction, division and reality TV. Here we see the emergence of terms such as ‘optics’ rearing their head in common parlance, an incorrectly deployed and severed theoretical word which, at least to me, screams “right winger”. Rather than address a unitary and common thread of discussion which advances human liberation, the political theatre (both self professed left and right wing parties) engages with, yet again, identity politics.
When this makes its way to the daily lives of civil society, the results are disastrous. Major political issues do not receive appropriate public scrutiny, the authenticity and genuine nature of human need and rights are ignored, and the machinery of capital is enabled to continue exploiting and extracting civil society year after year. As discussed previously, we no longer have time for negative distractions. We are on the brink of ecological collapse; societal collapse; and a rapid swing into fascist authoritarianism – the radical resurgence of which we are seeing in the south of the United States, across Europe with the recent election, and increasingly globally decaying “democracy” all in the name of “line goes up” capitalism.
Importantly I’d like to be clear that identity politics are very real and very destructive. The deployment and use of hate speech, microaggressions, and other forms of (lateral) violence have genuine impacts on human life. This is why the practice is so successful in aiding negative distraction. Rather than focus on issues of merit, such as assuring human rights to queer people, focussing on undoing the mass damage of corporate environmental destruction, enabling better funding of medical and social services, and so on the deployment of negative distraction to feed the political theatre drives hate, division, and distraction. A stereotypical Marxist may be criticised, here, for disregarding identity, matters of race, gender, disability and so on – but I believe this is often deployed as a further tool of negative distraction. Rather the left needs to find a way to unite intersectional causes under a banner of capitalist destruction. Not waiting for the revolution, but creating an intersectional future which -does- address the interstices as part of the revolutionary activity – otherwise we are doomed to perpetual failures of political/economic/governance systems which reproduce exploitation.
We can do better than being -distracted- by negative distraction. To my left-wing friends, this doesn’t mean it does not hurt, nor that things aren’t terrible, but if we can find just one ounce of energy left after successive attacks, it is a rallying cry to disavow political theatre and arm ourselves with meaningful analytical critique. Of course, the opening sentence of this paragraph is more a call to the right to look past the amplification of radical emotive issues and look to humanity, comradery, and collaboration. Though finding ways to engage in this kind of movement from right to left seems almost too far-gone as we witness fascist takeover. After all, if you’re standing with a fascist, you’re probably a fascist.
Cheery thoughts for a gloomy day on Kaurna country.
Your comrade,
Aidan
Gramsci, A., & Hoare, Q. (1985). Selections from the prison notebooks of Antonio Gramsci (8. pr). International Publ. ↩︎
Sue, D. W., & Spanierman, L. (2020). Microaggressions in Everyday Life. John Wiley & Sons. ↩︎
https://au.lifestyle.yahoo.com/david-tennant-called-rich-lefty-185201001.html ↩︎