Glenn Greenwald is turning into a huge pain in the ass. Always a bit of a sour puss, he used to at least be relevant. Lately, he has been lurking at the turnstiles of the Intellectual Dark Web looking longingly in, usually on a tear against political correctness, often popping up at the center of a Twitter storm of his own making, churning up indignation among the bros at the latest outrage from whatever figure on the left has inadvertently stepped into it.
In a recent discussion with Ben Burgis the title of whose new book, Canceling Comedians While the World Burns no doubt caused involuntary drool to form at the corner of Greenwald's mouth, Greenwald took issue with Burgis' proposition that the propensity of some on the left to reflexively police any perceived infraction of a rigid code of social justice was counterproductive to the project of increasing leftist power by arguing that on the contrary, the left had never been more powerful-- with socialists winning seats in Congress, making tremendous progress in presidential politics in the form of the Bernie Sanders campaign, and in fact victorious in the Culture War as surely evidenced by the sheer dominance of Cancel Culture.
Here's something it surprises me that the guy who facilitated the data dump of Edward Snowden and the release of Lula da Silva from Brazilian prison doesn't appear to know: The culture war is not a real war. There is nothing to win in that war. It is a distraction. It is a very successful distraction because it never fails to draw people away from actual struggle. The result is that actual struggle is undermined; real revolution is stalled. What this means is not that the left is bad because it is engaged in mere culture wars. Wars have two sides. One of the sides is often an aggressor. It is my view that the aggressor in the culture war, which is an old struggle which has origins in the first stirrings of the John Birch society and has continued decade after decade since is in fact the right. Like most of the wars originating on the right these days, it is a never-ending war. Its perpetuation depletes the left and engorges the right. And the left, which should to the greatest extent possible ignore these attacks (take as your mantra, "Sticks and stones may break my bones..."), takes the bait and engages. And being composed largely of very clever, expensively educated, sensitive types, its defense becomes a moist spectacle that both titillates its opponents and drives normal people, who would otherwise be much needed potential allies away.
As the late Michael Brooks pointed out in a video on the topic of an earlier Greenwald controversy, we should not confuse Glenn Greenwald's project with that of the left. The left Brooks reminds us is properly concerned with advancing the cause of the working class against the capitalist class usually in conflict with whoever is in power, including Democrats; Greenwald's project is always the exposure of corruption wherever he finds it. His mission coincides with that of the left when it challenges authoritarian regimes and institutions; when it is focussed on the American power structure, as it has been primarily for the past several months, often appropriately enough in appearances on Tucker Carlson's Fox show, it is arguably consistent with his anti-corruption mission, but more and more lately diverted to irrelevant tangential beefs with the left.
Inasmuch as Greenwald's critique is appropriately directed at the soulless leadership of the democratic party, I find it useful and justified. The premise that a few progressives in congress or the unprecedented success of Bernie Sanders in drawing attention to progressive policy goals in the past 2 presidential primaries represents the victory of socialism and therefore the justness of opposing it as if it were a mere component of the neoliberal power structure, or that a reflexively woke Twitter user is an exemplar of the corruption of the left, to be a jaw-droppingly juvenile conflation of leftism with the democratic party that not only invents corruption where it does not exist, but plays perfectly into Carlson's ultimately repressive and authoritarian agenda.
The chimeric victory of the left in the unending Culture War seems to be behind Glenn Greenwald's current derangement. But don't be distracted by his distraction.
No comments:
Post a Comment