Re: <nettime> Against Andrea Nagle's rightwing-masquerading-as-left trac

>What we're currently witnessing is a rift between a neo-traditionalist socialist political left

>and an intersectional political left. The former wants to re-focus all political struggle on

>(traditional) class struggle and the restoration of the welfare state, arguing that the latter

>can only work as a national state with a restrictive border and immigration regime.

What's alarming is that a rising alignment of certain left-right values outside of intersectionality is potentially permanent and real, not just a trick of the light caused by social-media noise and distortion weaponized by big players.

The right uses "globalism" as a code for Jewish / Foreign, but this blends invisibly with "globalization" from the left which means to refer to big transnational capital. There is plenty of room for isolated cells of self-educated internet organizers to find connections and synchronicities across the left-right divide, and wherever race or gender is an issue, they can claim this is some vaguely "elite" entity "trying to divide us." Thus dismissing identity politics is not a sticking point of racism vs justice but distraction vs unity. If no brown people show up at their meetings, they would barely notice.

That is, the reinforcement of anti-globalization on the left is potentially compatible with current re-alignment of right-wing white nationalism under pseudo-socialist populism. The success of the right wing variety, cancelling giant trade agreements like the TPP, may draw wavering adherents to this side. It's like the right-wing meme that the Nazis were leftists, coming true in a twisted form.

And even worse, on a global scale the alt-right Brazilians or Indians can be trotted out as proof that racism and xenophobia isn't the source of this energy.

>This camp dismisses intersectional positions as "liberal".

I've started to realize that globally we are starting to see a Parti-Quebecois-style of perhaps unwitting alliance across a great chasm, based on a few shared objectives. In Quebec the racist / xenophobic rural right (or even the gentle, conservative whites) has always had a blind alliance with the socialist / anarchist radical urban left, with the unifying factor being Quebec sovereignty. That is, the rural right wanted to protect their cultural privilege and way of life from erosion by "Le Boss," (an archetypical American or Anglo-Canadian business owner who moves to Quebec to extract labour without even bothering to learn French) while the urban left resists American capitalist imperialism (including cultural imperialism) in the form of that same "Le Boss."

Recently the campaign against Islamic head coverings ("Reasonable Accommodation") has shaken these alliances up, with many liberals siding against religious freedom in favour of Quebec white-nationalist identity (practically) and feminism (idealistically), while more radical intersectional leftists have broken from the alliance to defend muslim women from yet another form of clothing oppression. The Parti Quebecois is in steep decline.

The alignment of Greek leftism with alt-right godfather Putin is maybe the most alarming example of all this, although Trump's presidency is a big one too.

On Wed, Nov 28, 2018 at 1:48 AM Florian Cramer <[email protected]> wrote:

> Although not directly related to technology per se I found it related to our current discussions on the polis and inclusion, as well as a
> continuing commentary on how the online right operates deftly in ostensibly leftist spaces.

This is completely related to our previous discussion of 'identity politics'.

What we're currently witnessing is a rift between a neo-traditionalist socialist political left and an intersectional political left. The former wants to re-focus all political struggle on (traditional) class struggle and the restoration of the welfare state, arguing that the latter can only work as a national state with a restrictive border and immigration regime. This camp dismisses intersectional positions as "liberal". The German "Aufstehen" movement of Sarah Wagenknecht and theater maker Bernd Stegemann belongs into this category, the Dutch political thinker Ewald Engelen and the Dutch Socialist Party. (I'm sure there are more examples, these are only the ones I'm most familiar with.)

Movements like Bernie Sanders' and Jeremy Corbyn's seemingly attempt to reconcile both positions, but clearly focus their agenda on traditionalist class struggle (with Corbyn taking an unclear position towards Brexit). I see Angela in the traditionalist-socialist camp, too. That doesn't make her part of the "online right".

-F
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