The elites will discuss race. They will not discuss class.
—Chris Hedges
But Hedges summarizes the situation so well, he’s well worth quoting: (...)
The cancel culture — the phenomenon of removing or canceling people, brands or shows from the public domain because of offensive statements or ideologies — is not a threat to the ruling class. Hundreds of corporations, nearly all in the hands of white executives and white board members, enthusiastically pumped out messages on social media condemning racism and demanding justice after George Floyd was choked to death by police in Minneapolis. Police, which along with the prison system are one of the primary instruments of social control over the poor, have taken the knee, along with Jamie Dimon, the chief executive of the serially criminal JPMorgan Chase, where only 4 percent of the top executives are Black. Jeff Bezos, the richest man in the world whose corporation, Amazon, paid no federal income taxes last year and who fires workers that attempt to unionize and tracks warehouse laborers as if they were prisoners, put a “Black Lives Matter” banner on Amazon’s home page.
The rush by the ruling elites to profess solidarity with the protestors and denounce racist rhetoric and racist symbols, supporting the toppling of Confederate statues and banning the Confederate flag, are symbolic assaults on white supremacy. Alone, these gestures will do nothing to reverse the institutional racism that is baked into the DNA of American society. The elites will discuss race. They will not discuss class.To repeat: Hundreds of corporations, nearly all in the hands of white executives and white board members, enthusiastically pumped out messages on social media condemning racism and demanding justice after George Floyd was choked to death by police in Minneapolis.
In addition, we’re drowning in corporate self-polishing-apple ads, like those from Nike and MacDonalds touting how much they care about the market that buys their products, even as they exploit that market for all they can get take it for.
Is it not more than obvious at this point, that corporate America and the purchased “free-market” liberals they keep in office are using this racially charged moment — a moment that should be racially charged — to distract from the other crisis facing America, the one where “minimum wage workers cannot afford rent in any U.S. state,” to cite just one of the hundred brutal tortures they inflict on us daily? (...)
As one wag put it, Jeff Bezos is having a very good crisis.
Companies large enough to survive this event are flush with cash and gobbling failed competitors hand over fist. It’s been rightly said that when Covid has done its work, we won’t recognize the country it left behind.
The “cancel culture” war is a distraction, important though it is we have that discussion. While we watch the knife fight in the corner, cheering one side or the other on, the main event, the torched and burning town we all inhabit, consumes itself behind us.
by Thomas Neuberger, (Down With Tyranny) via Naked Capitalism | Read more:
[ed. From the comments:]
Joe
July 17, 2020 at 4:28 am
This captures many of the thoughts I’ve been having for the past few weeks. I live in Houston, a city with the highest rate of uninsured people in the U.S., who are mostly black and brown. Our ICUs are overloaded with COVID patients, and our morgues are filling up rapidly. Across the country, millions of Americans are about to lose their unemployment insurance, get laid off, evicted, foreclosed on, or some combination thereof. Thanks to a bipartisan commitment to socialism for the rich only, the billionaire class is getting richer and consolidating even more wealth and power in their hands. But where is the left? Instead of either a coherent strategy to help the unemployed, the foreclosed, the evicted and the sick and dying, or to challenge the oligarchs and the politicians they control, I am stunned to see our largely university-based, middle class left relitigating the same debates about political correctness and identity politics they had thirty years ago (now rebranded as the “cancel culture”), almost oblivious to the economic suffering around them.... I am not even talking about folks toppling Confederate monuments, which I support. I am talking about all the bullshit chatter about “cancel culture” this and “woke” that from Jacobin DSAers to New Yorker liberals. The massive amount of energy expended on arguing over symbolism at a time like this just shows how out of touch the middle class left is with working people and their needs. It makes me sick.
Joe
July 17, 2020 at 4:28 am
This captures many of the thoughts I’ve been having for the past few weeks. I live in Houston, a city with the highest rate of uninsured people in the U.S., who are mostly black and brown. Our ICUs are overloaded with COVID patients, and our morgues are filling up rapidly. Across the country, millions of Americans are about to lose their unemployment insurance, get laid off, evicted, foreclosed on, or some combination thereof. Thanks to a bipartisan commitment to socialism for the rich only, the billionaire class is getting richer and consolidating even more wealth and power in their hands. But where is the left? Instead of either a coherent strategy to help the unemployed, the foreclosed, the evicted and the sick and dying, or to challenge the oligarchs and the politicians they control, I am stunned to see our largely university-based, middle class left relitigating the same debates about political correctness and identity politics they had thirty years ago (now rebranded as the “cancel culture”), almost oblivious to the economic suffering around them.... I am not even talking about folks toppling Confederate monuments, which I support. I am talking about all the bullshit chatter about “cancel culture” this and “woke” that from Jacobin DSAers to New Yorker liberals. The massive amount of energy expended on arguing over symbolism at a time like this just shows how out of touch the middle class left is with working people and their needs. It makes me sick.
