BLACK LIVES MATTER (BLM) just got serious about political change. Casting aside the Occupy Wall Street model of structureless confusion, it has announced its intention to become a nationwide movement presenting a coherent political agenda for the radical transformation of American society.
Under the headline “Black Lives Matter Did Something Huge Today”, the Fusion website outlined the shape of the new BLM organisation:
“In a statement released by more than 30 organizations (and endorsed by an additional 50) BLM released six platform demands and “key solutions” – a list of more than 40 policy recommendations, including demilitarizing law enforcement, unionizing unregulated industries, and decriminalizing drugs.”
Fusion then commented on the significance of the BLM’s shift in organisational praxis:
“This is a really, really big deal. By shedding its previous identity as a largely reactionary, structureless movement, Black Lives Matter seeks to definitively lead the national discussion on the safety, health, and freedom of black people. Painting the movement with a broad brush is a seismic shift. And it’s a shift that Occupy Wall Street never put in motion, a failure which many point to as the reason for the movement’s eventual dissolution. The list of demands set forth by M4BL [the BLM’s new organising hub] explicitly unifies organizations across the United States – and though the goals are purposefully lofty, it’s a significant move towards harnessing the power of local groups into something bigger.”
The BLM’s decision – arrived at after a year of discussion and debate – signals the emergence of a new maturity in the ranks of America’s progressive change-makers. There’s clearly a growing realisation that neither street protests alone, nor the uncompromising assertion of personal identity, will ever be enough to secure an end to discrimination and injustice. The BLM’s radical re-orientation reflects this growing understanding. Their message: it is not sufficient to draw attention to the symptoms of oppression, one must also address its causes.
History is unequivocal on this point: it is only when people are ready to embrace practical politics – the “art of the possible, the attainable, the next best” – that anything worthwhile ever gets done.
Whether or not the New Zealand progressive movement has arrived at this point is highly debateable. Practical progressive organisations like the Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG) are few and far between. Vastly outnumbering them are the tens-of-thousands of self-defined progressives who confuse posting comments on Facebook or The Daily Blog with effective political action. Drawing their inspiration (and most of their information) from websites and/or bloggers who may – or may not – be affiliated to the “reality-based community”, they are never more happily engaged than when enumerating, with maximum brutality, the faults and failings of those they identify as representatives of the “mainstream”.
While a handful of these Internet revolutionaries can legitimately lay claim to the venerable title of “Anarchist” – which may loosely be defined as ‘collectivism with individualistic characteristics’ – most of them are more accurately categorised as progressive camp-followers.
Dependent upon the activities of genuine progressive activists for their political stimulation, such views as they willing to espouse are almost entirely derivative and lamentably uninformed. Their grasp of history, philosophy, economics and political science is weak to non-existent, making it next-to-impossible to draw them into any sort of useful – let alone fruitful – dialogue. This general ignorance is what makes them so difficult to distinguish from the people currently underpinning the presidential campaign of Donald Trump. They display exactly the same rage and resentment and are equally contemptuous of intellectuals and experts.
Not so much a progressive movement as a populist mob.
And therein lies the problem. Progressive politics has no need of mobs, nor should it have any truck with that condescending and homogenising expression “the masses”. It is the Right that delights in transforming sentient citizens into mindless yokels. Citizens demand ideas and the opportunity to debate them; a mob needs only slogans to shout, and a bogeywoman to demonise with names like “Killary”, and chants of “Lock her up!”
One of the reasons the BLM movement was so ready to abandon its structurelessness in favour of a disciplined nationwide movement was the ease with which the Right (i.e. Fox News) has been able to seize upon the most extreme views of BLM protesters and present them to “mainstream” America as an accurate reflection of the movement’s objectives. With an agreed political agenda and elected leaders, the BLM will be considerably more difficult to smear.
Here in New Zealand, genuinely progressive individuals, organisations and blogsites face similar misrepresentations. All it takes is one angry, ill-informed individual with a keyboard and an Internet connection for a mainstream visitor – someone poised to join in the struggle for positive change – to be put off “progressive” politics for life.
Perhaps it’s time for New Zealand’s genuine progressives to make the same commitment as BLM to practicing the art of the possible. To paraphrase one of the historical movement’s greatest intellectuals: They have nothing to lose but the ignorant slogan-chanters who are holding them back. They have a country to win.
“It is the Right that delights in transforming sentient citizens into mindless yokels”
Odd that, when modern liberalism is all about individual freedom and the Old Left wants to collectivize everything it surveys.
So what does you righties collectivize everything it surveys?
You have you messiah -money Junkie John?
Grow up. If what you call ‘modern liberalism’ is not about putting up a pretence of individual freedom while quietly transforming sentient citizens into mindless yokels, I have a very attractive bridge to sell you.
Collectivizing?? Let’s just stop privatising all the profits while socialising all the losses.
Bailing out the banks in 2008 was ‘collectivising’ the losses, wasn’t it?
That’s a bit of a straw man argument IN VINO.
It’s worth noting that no banks were bailed out in Australasia in 2008. Thanks to efficiently run private banks, we were fine.
Now, looking back in NZ history, BNZ was bailed out by government four times in it’s history. That was collectivization!
ERRR wrong Andrew. New Zealand received nine billon dollars in bail out money as a matter of fact.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n0NYBTkE1yQ
You are full of crap Andrew. It is the right that is hellbent on dumbing down any hint of questioning their policies by flooding us with “bread and circuses”, just like the Romans.You are indeed transforming sentient citizens into mindless yokels.
‘History is unequivocal on this point: it is only when people are ready to embrace practical politics – the “art of the possible, the attainable, the next best” – that anything worthwhile ever gets done’.
The key words in that weird paragraph of surrender are the words ‘anything worthwhile’…who decides whats worthwhile? Chris Trotter?
Here in NZ in his comfy warm lounge Chris approves what the BLM in the US does…I’m sure they’ll take note of his deep and meaningful words of wisdom and compassion.
Following his advice I imagine that the BLM movement will in the year 2088 get a member into the Senate… in the meanwhile most American Blacks will have lost the right to vote, or will have died in overseas wars after being drafted. Been driven further into poverty and slum housing etc.
So I would suggest that the BLM movement in the US decides for its self its next step or steps, the Occupy Movement was but one leg that represented the dissatisfaction of the oppressed.
Chris Trotter should watch more ‘Democracy Now’ programmes to see what is actually happening in the US today. The BLM movement in the US needs Trotters advice about as much as the left does here in NZ.
Chris suggests the BLM can create change by voting rather than taking collective action…can he not understand that millions of blacks don’t have the vote…and are dying on the street from police bullets…
Using Chris’s theory of appeasement and hope, millions will die meantime, but as Chris would say…”They have nothing to lose but the ignorant slogan-chanters”, who are holding them back.
As a populist mob the sans culottes never had the internet…so they did “stuff “. You are right Chris, time to do real stuff.
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible make violent revolution inevitable” -John F Kennedy (who was assassinated by ‘the mob’ the following year for daring to challenge the system).
The military-industrial-financial empire is a self-protecting entity and is ready and waiting to pounce on anyone who steps seriously out of line, more so now than at any time in its existence. In America, police forces and other ‘security’ agencies have already been issued with military-style vehicles and weapons, in preparation for the inevitable conflicts that will arise as ever greater numbers of Americans get driven into poverty and despair by those at the top of the pyramid. Expect the same elsewhere in the world as conditions deteriorate.
There cannot be political change because the system is dependent on there being no change, and those who benefit most from current arrangements are obviously prepared to orchestrate further mass slaughter (as per Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen etc., perhaps even nuclear war) to maintain their positions of privilege and power.
However, the empire WILL be brought to its knees over the next decade by energy starvation, unravelling of global financial Ponzi schemes and abrupt climate change, which are already eroding many of the more vulnerable components.
In the meantime most New Zealanders seem to be following the Aldous Huxley prescription:
“There will be, in the next generation or so, a pharmacological method of making people love their servitude, and producing dictatorship without tears, so to speak, producing a kind of painless concentration camp for entire societies, so that people will in fact have their liberties taken away from them, but will rather enjoy it, because they will be distracted from any desire to rebel by propaganda or brainwashing, or brainwashing enhanced by pharmacological methods. And this seems to be the final revolution.”
-Aldous Huxley, Tavistock Group, California Medical School, 1961
WOOHOO!! Thanks CHRIS!
I’m hoping a few people are uncomfortable reading this, we desperate need of action over words.
We have a plethora of keyboard warriors – get off your butts and fight for your freedom!
Hey – I happen to have a really comfortable chair in front of my keyboard..
Action is stronger then words!
So yes it’s time for action beginning with a nation wide march on Parliament when the weather settles down? get more attendance?
With all angry folk with pitch forks or such like as they did back then when us like the angry farmers did over the fart tax and driving the Massey fergie tractor up the Parliament steps remember?
The rotten politicians then must have felt threatened then righty.
Now didn’t that finally get some Government action then so yes it is time to build a march on parliament to show the world all is not well here in NZZZZZZZ
Ouch, Chris.
And yes, but.
Imagine a slab of plain pudding sparingly sprinkled with currants throughout most of the pallid mass. A few clusters of currants in favourable places.
And that’s NZ’s progressives.
The NAACP has been around since 1909. It has history and heroes and track record. It also has a clear mission and some virulent wrongs to correct. It has infrastructure, too, and a smidgen of help from assorted churches.
What’s the Kiwi equivalent? What’s the pass to get through the ‘not one of us’ barriers protecting the cliques and cliches who claim to be ‘progressive’ and ‘left’ (such a silly term, that).
A fair enough, criticism, Chris, and here’s mine back – what would you have us do, as foot soldiers and pitchfork wavers with nothing but exasperation and no experience of organising and rallying.
BLM has their ‘old’. What’s our ‘new’? because most of our ‘olds’ – unions, churches, clubs, have faded – and many of the ‘new’ such as food banks and anti-poverty action groups – aren’t quite what is needed.
Let’s have Chapter 2, Chris.
Guide Us, guide us!!!
Maybe join a political party. Of your choice. Start thinking about real solutions to real problems. Maybe a CIR should a question present itself. Maybe pressure on local politicians if you can identify a wrong that is solvable. To imagine nothing can be done overlooks the core concept of the Left: that group action – be it governmental or just that of a citizens’ collective – is far stronger and more effective that the efforts of single people. If you don’t believe that then maybe the Left isn’t the place for you.
Not everyone is in a position to do everything, but more can be done than just bitch and name call, which is often pitchfork du jour here and elsewhere.
Its no mystery that the design of TDB, and internet comments more generally, stimulate a lot of trolling behaviours. This can be improved and largely eliminated by careful attention to design – a good example of this can be seen with Yes! Magazine ( http://www.yesmagazine.org ) – and that could be heavily improved upon IMHO.
With TDB in particular, it’s an attack-blog – what do you expect if not polarizing responses? On the other hand, if you’re part of the “positive change”, lead the way!
People who live in glass houses should not throw stones. I’ve been aware of C Trotter as a newspaper columnist and blogger for decades (until fairly recently as an uncritical cheerleader for the Blairite Labour party under Clark, Goff, and Shearer), but I’m not aware of a single example of him moving from commentator to organiser. Much as I have appreciated a lot of his writing on TDB over the last few years, he is, perhaps, the ultimate “keyboard warrior” (to use his own patronizing phrase).
As for Trotter’s hand-waving dismissal of Occupy, where was he when we were camping out in public, trying to start a political revolution? Where were most of the “progressive movement”? With a few honorable exceptions (including my old mates Joe C, Malcolm, Anarkatie and others), they were sleeping comfortably in their own beds, and posting on social media about what we were doing.
Let’s be realistic. Activist blog sites like TDB and Indymedia are not political organisations. They are essentially the modern equivalent of the samizdat pamphleteers, or at their best, the mass working class newspapers. They can be a forum to educate, and to agitate, but they are pretty much useless for organising. I think most of us know this, and do what we can to organize in our own communities, in single-issue campaigns, and so on. In most cases, there is no way of knowing who is behind the pseudonyms used to comment on sites like this, and what organising they might be involved in.
Ironically, what the BLM movement has done has much more in common with anarchist organizing than “progressive” organising, which generally involves large numbers of people acting as protest shock troops and PR repeaters for one or more hierarchical political parties. Rather than engage is a false, cross-class “unity” with the “left” of the status quo, BLM protested the Democrat convention, where party faithful (that turncoat Sanders included) were trying to convince themselves that Clinton is the “lesser of two evils” (despite damning evidence from people like John Pilger that she is, in practice, just as evil as Trump). By launching their independent platorm as a shot across the Democrats boughs, BLM have stepped outside of that false choice, and stepped up to carry on the “political revolution” that Sanders has abandoned (if he was ever serious about it). More of this please.
“While a handful of these Internet revolutionaries can legitimately lay claim to the venerable title of “Anarchist” – which may loosely be defined as ‘collectivism with individualistic characteristics’ – most of them are more accurately categorised as progressive camp-followers.”
Camp followers were an important logistical part of a military campaign.
(and maybe it’s a bit sexist to use it as a derogatory term).
“Never be deceived that the rich will allow you to vote away their wealth”
Lucy Parsons: Freedom, Equality & Solidarity – Writings & Speeches, 1878-1937 …
“Dr. King’s policy was that nonviolence would achieve the gains for black people in the United States. His major assumption was that if you are nonviolent, if you suffer, your opponent will see your suffering and will be moved to change his heart. That’s very good. He only made one fallacious assumption: In order for nonviolence to work, your opponent must have a conscience.”
Kwame Ture, (Better known as Stokely Carmichael)
Erudite, elitist, evangelical, patronizing, informative, hysterical, cogent, effective, self-defeating, biased, poetical, pompous and sympathetic.
These are some adjectives I stream-of-consciously find to describe Chris’ efforts. I hope they can put a red flag on wanting to follow either his shoe or his gourd.
Chris seems to be largely a writer not a fighter. There is little or no constant thread to his sermons. Sometimes he is keen on the art of the possible, sometimes an enthusiast for getting behind the barricades. Often he will turn and attack his own, or give a pass to his most obdurate opponent. Sometimes his columns are coherent analyses sometimes they are an overstated load of garbage, although they are always interesting and mostly worth reading. At his best he can force you to rethink and sometimes even check your own settings. No bad thing. This particular post is quite savage, and a little holier-than-thou. But is it untrue?
“This particular post is quite savage, and a little holier-than-thou. But is it untrue?”
Yes. What Chris is saying, when you read this column in combination with his horrific defence of the war criminal Clinton, is that the “progressive” movement should settle down and get respectable in preparation for another wheel-spinning turn at government, as the good cop to the NatACT’s bad cop. To achieve this, he urges us to shed our shaggy radicals, all those non-aligned but furious working class people whose complex and evolving opinions don’t fit neatly into his “progressive” pidgeoholes, and line up in an orderly line behind Labour and the Greens.
Speaking as a shaggy radical, I think we should do the opposite. Unite across as many ideological divides as possible, and organize huge, diverse coalitions like BLM, to actively resist the crimes of whoever is in government, expose the crimes we can’t stop, and do everything we can to hold the bastards accountable. Starting now, and continuing regardless of the results of any election. A change of rulers is the joy of fools.
‘A change of rulers is the joy of fools.’
nice..
did someone say something not very nice to chris trotter on a blog one time..?
(just wondering why his knickers are in such a knot..why he is so b & t..?..)
i was gonna pull up my (very comfortable) chair (it rolls and leans back..!..whoar..!..) to my monitor – and slap on my armour – and assume the keyboard-warrior pose..and unpack this load of tosh..
..but i was called away for ‘camp follower’ duties..
and when you talk of ‘mindless-slogans’..do you mean things like ‘stop eating animals!’..?
and i dunno why i am even asking you a question – ‘cos you never engage in any ‘dialogue’ with questioners of your epistles…do you..?
..too busy ‘organising’..?
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