Current Events > i really think the big stumbling block is right populism

(+) Yeah! (+)

the view from the left is that the system needs to be broken down because of its contradictions, and if enough people can identify and name those contradictions and see them as the cause of their immiseration, there can be a unified push back and a new transcendent order can emerge.

the problem is that the right has completely co-opted the language and righteous anger of attacking the system and elitism, but their project is not to destroy it. it's to seize control of it for their selfish ends. this is much more appealing as a message to atomized, lazy beneficiaries of exploitation. therefore all the revolutionary energy, such that it exists, is expressed through consumer behavior on the right.

that's how you end up with the capital being stormed not by people demanding health care, or housing, or education, or any of the real material things that are out of reach for so much of the population... but instead by people mad that their team didn't win. and of course they get in and wander around gawking, because they don't have the real energy. it was always a consumer identity that they were playing at, and they sort of got to the end of the game and the credits started rolling, and didn't know what to do.

basically what i think is happening is that too much of the revolutionary energy is bottled up and being allowed to release in these sort of limited ways that don't actually challenge capital at all. i don't know how to change that because there are so many people out there i can't even begin to imagine trying to make them understand their predicament from the left perspective. they see it in wholly different terms than i do