The grifters are out; Trump's tack backfires
Trump's weaker positioning, the self-involvement of some white liberal activist models, and a warning about corporate grifters.
Hello friends,
In this week's newsletter:
(1) Some notes about the ongoing protests: Trump's weaker positioning, the shortcomings and self-involvement of some activist models, and a warning about corporate grifters.
(2) What I’m reading
Housekeeping:
(1) I received a surprising amount of positive feedback to the style of last week’s newsletter — it seems people liked the multiple-angle, shorter points style. I’m going to experiment with it more this week. All feedback is very much appreciated.
(2) I continue to receive reports of email heading to people’s junk folders, so if you haven’t been receiving these lately it might be worth checking that folder and marking the email as not junk. Also you can guard against it happening by adding my email (zeeshanaleem2@gmail.com) to your contacts.
Notes on where we are with the protests
1. Trump’s rhetoric of brutal repression didn’t work — and may have backfired
Last week I struck what could be characterized as an uneasy tone about the pace of events surrounding the George Floyd protests. In particular, I was concerned about Donald Trump’s White House speech threatening to use the Insurrection Act of 1807 against the backdrop of violent suppression of peaceful protests — the Washington Post has a thorough video breakdown here — and the specter of a substantial authoritarian turn.
That concern has ebbed, for a number of reasons:
A) The public is astonishingly supportive of the protests — and on multiple fronts, as revealed by a Washington Post-Scar School survey. There’s jaw-dropping breadth in support — 87% of Democrats, 76% of independents, and 53% of Republicans back the protests. And there’s also depth to the opinion: 69% say the killing of Floyd represents a broader problem within law enforcement. Even more surprising still might be the fact that among those who believe the protests have been mostly violent — a group made up heavily of Republicans and independents — 53% still support them.
The 2014-2015 round of Black Lives Matter protests changed pubic opinion considerably and plenty of polls suggest a much swifter, larger effect from the past few weeks. Pollster Frank Luntz says he’s “never seen opinion shift this fast or deeply” in 35 years of work.
In other words, Trump’s over-the-top rhetoric has not found a mass audience, and doesn't seem to be tremendously popular among his base — something that is allowing Biden to soar in the polls.
B) The military is resisting Trump’s attempt to use it to crack down on discord. Several top current and former military officials and Trump’s own defense secretary broke with him on using troops to put down protests. Reports indicate low morale among National Guard troops used to quash protests at the White House. Per the Times: “One soldier said he and some fellow troops were so ashamed in taking part against the protests that they have kept it from family members.”Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Mark Milley expressed regret for appearing in Trump’s unholy photo op outside St. John’s church and even discussed resigning with confidantes.This comes on top of past polling showing growing disapproval of Trump among service members over the course of his presidency. Bottom line: While it appears that police officers, and especially police unions, tend to lean heavily MAGA, the military — and especially its leaders embedded in the state bureaucracy — are not sold on Trump’s militaristic vision. This greatly complicates Trump’s ability to use blunt force and lean on the military to advance a law-and-order agenda. Trump’s decision to resume campaigning on Juneteenth, the holiday marking the liberation of slaves after the Civil War, in Tulsa, a city where up to 300 black people were killed by mobs of white people in one of the largest episodes of racist violence in US history, is a deliberate provocation — and suggests he’s doubling down on the authoritarian race war paradigm.
What I’m keeping in mind: historian Rick Perlstein’s recent piece in Mother Jones that even Nixon and Reagan made some nominal efforts to obscure the racism underlying their campaign strategies. It's unclear if there's a modern analogue for Trump's train whistle racism at the presidential level.
2. Watch out for: liberals who make everything about themselves
Please watch this short video of prominent white actors promising to be better allies as part of an initiative by “ITakeResponsibility.org”:
"I Take Responsibility"
Some people might find this video to be moving. I find it hilarious. And not only because it seems like a bunch of out-of-work thespians are desperate for some showmanship. I find it funny because it’s so thoroughly devoid of meaning, and so exquisitely self-involved.
ITakeResponsibility.org says that white people “cannot sit idle” as “systemic racism” and police brutality ravage the nation. But virtually every statement in the video pertains to the opposite of systemic racism.
There isn’t talk of segregation and discrimination in policing, incarceration, schooling, real estate, admissions programs, the job market, and so on. Instead, everything is about interpersonal examples of racism: “jokes,” “stereotypes,” “hate.” In accordance with this diagnosis of the problem, the commitments made are also interpersonal: “checking,” “calling out,” and “standing against” behavior deemed problematic. These people are looking at the tips of icebergs and unconcerned about the hull of the ship.
I am deeply uninterested in praising people for making commitments to foster political correctness in their social scene; that should’ve been the norm before, and it will do little to address the fundamental reasons black Americans are executed routinely by armed agents of the state. The officer who pinned George Floyd’s neck to the ground for 8 minutes and 46 seconds was indeed being called out by bystanders; the problem began well before he placed his knee on the man’s neck. The way to deal with systemic racism is to reckon with the systems.
This video also distills something I encounter constantly all over social media: the way many white liberals are making activism about their self-enrichment. What starts off as a (typically) well-intentioned attempt to express solidarity becomes about learning, introspection, and individual growth rather than taking meaningful action and making material commitments. The obvious objection here is that this is a “yes and” situation where the psychology of whiteness is important to excavate in any antiracist struggle. I don’t deny that it has some value. But, as I’ve said before: read the room, be alive to this specific moment. The inner life of white people should not be driving this conversation, and it shouldn’t be sucking up so much oxygen.
Critical race and postcolonial theorists have been talking about this phenomenon of whites using blackness and the Orient as a vehicle for self-exploration for decades. In fact Toni Morrison, who is glibly quoted in the #ITakeResponsibility mission statement, wrote about this in her book Playing in the Darkness.
The problem with this paradigm is it requires an unacceptable level of trust in individuals to not abuse their power. Why should Christian Cooper trust that an ostensibly liberal person in Central Park might not just call the cops on him because they're having a bad day? The key to building anything that could endure and advance society is to redistribute power, not bank on someone else's good will. After all, some Park Slope liberals who would never dare to make a racist joke and are well-versed in privilege talk are still repelled by the idea of integrating schools.
3. Corporations are becoming more sophisticated mimics, not having a change of heart
I've seen a significant amount of excitement among progressives about the way that corporations are releasing statements supportive of Black Lives Matter and, in some cases, making commitments to increased diversity in recruitment and the like. We should not be under any illusions as to what's driving this: profit motives; desperate avoidance of the reputational cost of being canceled; advertising for the firm in the form of zeitgeisty virtue-signaling. As I wrote last year in my newsletter about the scourge of woke corporations (in response to a Burer King ad about "mental health awareness"), this is a financial calculation, not a moral one:
"This should be very simple: Corporations are profit-maximizing machines and everything they do is in service of that goal. If they wade into an explicitly political topic, it it based solely on the calculation that the action will help them maximize profits, because that is what is demanded by investors. Any move that appears like it could be risky is also driven by that logic. When Nike embraced cultural lightning rod Colin Kaepernick, it accurately predicted that more sales to their core customer demographic — young people in cities — would offset attrition among their non-core buyers. Indeed, the brand saw record engagement and a huge boom in sales. (They also clearly knew that their hegemony as an athletic brand would make long-term boycotts virtually impossible.)
If the millennial zeitgeist was moving toward kicking homeless people, every single one of these companies would be running ads calling for that.
But there's also something else that young liberal millennials should take away from this. If apolitical organizations can so easily mimic your politics, then maybe your politics aren't all that edgy. These companies are able to camouflage among real purveyors of privilege politics — people who talk about being aware of white privilege, male privilege, etc. — because its easy and its costless for them. It is precisely because advocates for looking at the world through the prism of privilege tend to focus on awareness, representation, recognition and learning to talk a certain way about inclusivity, that it is easy for corporations to not only look like they share these values, but also appear as if they're engaged in actual activism on that front.
This isn't to say privilege politics doesn't have merit — a lot of it is right as far as it goes. But talking about privilege without talking about power — where it resides, and how to wrest control of it — makes it toothless outside of the cultural sphere."
Last note on this for now: some corporations might give one-off donations to civil rights organizations, but how much does that matter if they spend far more money and time paying lobbyists and donating to politicians who undermine civil rights?
What I'm reading
Deep dive: the economic origins of mass incarceration.
Michelle Alexander: America this is your chance
Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor: How do we change America?
Angela Davis: “Safety safeguarded by violence is not really safety.” [short video clip]
Defunding the Police Is Not Nearly Enough.
A worksheet from CriticalResistance.org charting out the difference between reformist measures and police abolitionist measures. I'm not familiar with the site, but a friend passed it on as a helpful tool for thinking through the issues.
Unbundle the police: "The roles of warrior cop, traffic patroller, and tax collector are bound up in a way that practically guarantees a large number of violent encounters between armed police and civilians. The United States has about 40 percent more police officers per capita than England or Australia, but adjusted for population, U.S. law enforcement kills 20 to 100 times more people."
Deep dive on Bill de Blasio's failure to reform the NYPD.
The Riots of the 1960s Led to Rise in Militarization of Police
Why Ta-Nehisi Coates is hopeful.
How the unlikely pairing of cops and hippies in Eugene became a national model.
Some background and history on antifa, which can be traced back to the 1930s in the UK and Germany.
Trump’s planned rally in Tulsa, site of a race massacre, on Juneteenth is 'almost blasphemous.’
Via JSTOR — Institutionalized racism: a syllabus.