Swammerdami
Squadron Leader
(I couldn't find a better thread than this for this post.)
I am accustomed to thinking of the U.S. as leading the way, among developed countries, on the misguided march toward right-wing politics. Thus I was startled and pleased to see an opposite, more optimistic opinion at Monthly Review:
What am I, a professed centrist, doing seeking opinions at Monthly Review? Frankly I find "centrist" U.S. media to be bankrupt of ideas these days. Also I'm an advocate of the "push on the pendulum" view of politics. There is little danger of extreme leftism in America's near-term future; instead we must push leftward as hard as we can to save America from the right-wing chasm into which it is plummeting.
I am accustomed to thinking of the U.S. as leading the way, among developed countries, on the misguided march toward right-wing politics. Thus I was startled and pleased to see an opposite, more optimistic opinion at Monthly Review:
One of the principal concerns of progressives right now is how to sustain that activism, how to prevent it from being demobilised. Much of the future rests on the ability of the left to do that. There’s been no other country—certainly no European country, or Australia, New Zealand or Canada—that has seen such a powerful resurgence of the left [as in the U.S.], or one that is so solidly, generationally specific and anchored. And of course, youth of colour, the coming plurality of the American population, played a central role in this—particularly the Black women who built Black Lives Matter. After Sanders’ concession, you faced the possibility that tens of thousands of young people who had been active in his campaign would just become pessimistic and disorganised, when instead their activism was recycled by BLM. We must conserve and nurture activism above all. [Swammi's emphasis]
What am I, a professed centrist, doing seeking opinions at Monthly Review? Frankly I find "centrist" U.S. media to be bankrupt of ideas these days. Also I'm an advocate of the "push on the pendulum" view of politics. There is little danger of extreme leftism in America's near-term future; instead we must push leftward as hard as we can to save America from the right-wing chasm into which it is plummeting.