Sunday, August 13, 2017

Today in Dispossession

Yesterday at the annual Netroots Nation conference a white candidate for the Democratic nomination for Georgia governor was "de-platformed", in-the-parlance-of-our-time, when a gang of black activists surrounded her and shouted her down, demanding we "trust black women."



Stacey Evans is a state House representative running for governor against Stacey Abrams, Who Is Black, Peace Be Upon Her (as well as national party support). Whatever goodwill White Stacey has in the bank won't be available for withdrawal for the time being, maybe forever.
As for her part, Black Stacey is Totally Cool with what happened to Becky:
Abrams said in a statement that she would not “condemn peaceful protest” and that the demonstrators were voicing their concern with Evans’ support for a Republican-led effort to give the state new powers over struggling schools. “From what I observed from Savannah, activists in Atlanta peacefully protested this morning on the critical issue of preserving public education for every family in our state,” she said.
“The mantra of ‘trust black women’ is an historic endorsement of the value of bringing marginalized voices to the forefront, not a rebuke to my opponent’s race.”
This would be a noteworthy endorsement of thuggery by an establishment candidate if anyone was paying attention. It's unclear if anyone's dared ask Abrams if she has any connection to the protesters.

I suspect a lot of the political hatred for white women on the left is rationalized resentment of white women by black women, going unchallenged. Whatever the case right now white women are sinking conceptually in the Democratic hierarchy. As "white" becomes increasingly negative, that sort of half-share of it they were allowed as allies gets heavier; and while having a vagina is still applied like a premium the same way as for ethnicity, black women deploying the double-premium of sex-race cancel them out, ethnic men cancel them out, and the remaining white men against whom it is a trump card are only going to grow scarcer.

White Democratic women are left only with the whiteness they've worked so hard to stigmatize.

Hillary Clinton and now Elizabeth Warren have abandoned young white women in their embrace of identity politics. Within the Democratic Party the betrayal of younger whites by aging boomers plays out just as it does in society and politics as a whole. White women are being cut out of the deal in the Democratic Party--is this what your feminist grandmother signed on for?--as part of white people being cut out of the deal in America--is this really what your liberal grandparents signed on for?

Black Stacey's core advocacy is "voter suppression"--but of course, when you consider the video above. That she's the establishment candidate, on a mission to turn Georgia blue, means the Democratic Party effectively shut down one of their own candidates. Nowadays it's hard to see the outrage for all the outrage.

Her battle with Evans is a skirmish in the broader conflict within the party between altruistic economic progressives who wish to remain on speaking terms with working class whites, and those who see one party rule in identity politics.

The elite has always quietly disdained the working class, now they openly disdain whites (even those thus afflicted); true progressive policies are still anathema to corporate America; thus we arrive at our weird new world marrying the corporate world with radical identity politics in the Democratic Party.

Here Black Stacey and Chris Hayes gloat over Hillary Clinton's upcoming blowout of Donald Trump in the 2016 election and the progress of white demographic displacement (and the importance of white women to come out to vote):



White Stacey presents an alternative to the all-identity-politics-all-the-time model which lost Hillary Clinton the presidency but to which the Democrats remain committed. She'll try to coax across white working class voters with Clintonian (Bill not Hill) rhetoric and maybe even policy.
It's hard not to assume at this point the Democrats don't want to win with whites now, when they still only need wait to safely ignore them and enjoy one party rule. If someone wins by wooing whites now someone else will try it; before you know it, the practice is a legitimate alternative.

But Democrats don't want to stretch to accommodate working class whites when they can just wait them out or, better still, hasten them--and their needs--out. Besides, accommodation of working class whites complicates the demonization of whites--which is non-negotiable (and is directed against working class whites, really, a source of embarrassment if nothing else). There isn't room for both schemes. That's why Stacey Evans and her audience were denied their civil rights; she's messing up the program.

Netroots, began in 2006, was always destined to lose its "grassroots" legitimacy and be co-opted by the Democratic Party. Now the Democratic Party is being co-opted by Black Inc, which holds a majority voting share.

It was at Netroots in 2015 that black protesters shut down Democratic presidential candidate Martin O'Malley when he flubbed the shibboleth "black lives matter." Bernie Sanders refused to be bowed completely and managed to get off his prepared speech.

DailyKos founder Markos Moulitsas himself explained why that Aggression Would Not Stand (Bernie's, of course) and in the process gave his own game away a bit:
 Sanders supporters and #BLM protesters waged battle on Twitter for days. It was an unfortunate turn of events, one that exposed a racial rift between Sanders’s highly educated, white and mostly male supporters, and the younger, more diverse crowd fueling the fight against police brutality in communities of color. 
Progressive activists have engaged on issues of unequal justice, police militarization and violence against people of color with an intensity I’ve never previously witnessed.
At Daily Kos, coverage of those issues is nearly guaranteed to receive viral hits and has driven the site’s record growth. 
Nothing else comes close to capturing community interest, not even Donald Trump, even though our audience is predominantly white. Sanders was utterly unprepared to discuss the topic that animates today’s progressive activism. [boldface added]
Moulitsas is probably being indiscreet here in admitting he's determining newsworthiness and a movement's integrity entirely on its ability to generate business through hits. But it's notable who's hitting and demanding that coverage: white progressives.

We see the Left already hopelessly tied in knots by 2015: Moulitsas' "predominately white" readership was scandalized that Bernie Sanders' campaign was predominately white.

That those "Bernie Bros" were volunteering their time out of altruism, working against their self interest for an agenda that devalues them, in contrast to women turning out for Hillary and blacks turning out in racial solidarity, wasn't enough to break the spell (and less so now), so it can't be said, but from the progressive point of view blacks and women aren't pulling their weight.

The contrast of selflessness to selfishness is striking; no one sees it. Not even the Right. We're so conditioned such thoughts cannot form in the mind.

How far down the rabbit hole is Netroots? Does it matter? Netroots is about to become as relevant as The Roots.

Whatever the case, Bernie Sanders got the message after standing up for himself at that 2015 conference. When what looked like a pair of mediocre community college students bore down on him at a podium in Seattle he knew what to do: nothing. Standing bowed with hands clasped in front of him he looked like a penitent.

Black people have been the soul of the Left for a long time. From Bryan Burrough's account of sixties terrorism, Days of Rage:
An even more prevalent myth, however, is that the radical violence that commenced in 1970 was a protest against hte Vietnam War. In fact, while members of this new underground were vehemently antiwar, the war itself was seldom their primary focus. "We related to the war in a purely opportunistic way," recalls Howard Machtinger, one of the Weather Underground's early leaders. "We were happy to draw new members who were antiwar. But this was never about the war." 
What the underground was truly about--what it was always about--was the plight of black Americans. Every single underground group of the 1970s, with the notable exception of the Puerto Rican FALN, was concerned first and foremost with the struggle o f blacks against police brutality, racism, and government repression. While late in the decade several groups expanded their worldview to protest events in South Africa and Central America, he black cause remained the core motivation of almost every significant radical who engaged in violent activities during the 1970s. "Helping out the blacks, fighting alongside them, that was the whole kit and caboodle," says Machtinger. "That was what we were all about." 
"Race comes first, always first," says Elizabeth Fink, a radical attorney in Brooklyn who represented scores of underground figures. "Everything started with the Black Panthers.The whole thrill of being with them. When you heard Huey Newton you were blown away. The civil rights movement had turned bad, and these people were ready to fight. And yeah, the war. The country was turning into Nazi Germany, that's how we saw it. Do you have the guts to stand up? The underground did. And oh, the glamour of it. The glamour of dealing with the underground. They were my heroes. Stupid me...we were so, so deluded." 
 (...)
"I think in our hears what all of us wanted to be," former SDS leader Cathy Wilkerson recalls, "was a Black Panther." 

Either the blacks give the Left its romance and energy, its vitality, and deserve the preeminence it has earned them, or blacks have been hustling whites for about a half a century through the Democratic Party.
But seeing how little we have learned in our fascination with blacks, one thing is undeniable: the more things change, the more they stay the same.`

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