TC
16th January 2011, 20:58
From Mike Ely of the Kasama Project, a brilliant analysis of the limits of American political discourse:
http://kasamaproject.org/2011/01/15/the-third-rails-of-official-politics/
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First let me point out that confining politics to what is acceptable to the bourgeoisie is done in the name of (a) focusing on what is possible, (b) maintaining alliances necessary for influencing current policy, (c) having a presence that is not offensive to mainstream pubic opinion, (d) slowly laying the basis now for further leaps of political consciousness later, and so on.
But in reality, the sum of those arguments is to confine oppositional politics to what is acceptable to a ruling class (and to leading elements in its sharply divided political establishment).
Let’s make that list here: Here are some things that the official political arena generally considers outside the realm of respectable debate. They operate as a kind of “third rail (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_rail_%28metaphor%29)” — touch them and you risk a political death.
Opposing Israel’s existence as a racist settler state (which has long served as a particularly abrupt “third rail” in U.S. politics).
Considering the U.S. an imperialist powers whose pretense of democracy masks cruder interests.
Arguing for socialized (social democratic) medicine is (generally) considered outside the pale of bourgeois political discussion in the U.S.
Advocating a right of violence for the oppressed, or questioning the monopoly of violence for the authorities. — it was very defining in Martin Luther King’s politics, which sought to shatter Jim Crow while remaining within a framework more-or-less acceptable to the larger non-southern imperialist ruling class (with the hope of having them allies, or at least neutralized).
Arguing that the traditional nuclear family is an institution that reproduces male supremacy — and that intimate relations need radical transformation.
Questioning the sanctity of the U.S. Constitution and the founding fathers.
Public advocacy of revolution, anti-capitalism and socialism (not the Bernie Sanders social-democratic kind)
In some cases it has to do with having open socialists and communists on speakers platforms and coalitions. This was evident in Vietnam days when the establishment liberals (and Michael Harrington their democratic socialist instrument within the “movement”) insisted that the antiwar movement needed a defacto anti-communist clause — and so two coalitions were formed and reformed throughout the Vietnam era, one containing the CPUSA and the other not containing them. But it came up more recently when Van Jones was accused of having earlier hardline Marxist Leninist politics, and sections of the political establishment thought that was too much to allow.
Support for international forces that are in strong (and armed) conflict with the U.S. — for example openly supporting the National Liberation Front in Vietnam, or openly supporting Cuba’s revolutionary government during the Bay of Pigs.
It is present in every debate of antiwar coalitions — with some (often dominant) forces acting as enforcers — and insisting that tactics, demands and tone have to be in line to their own hopes of becoming close allies of ruling liberals. It comes up over any mention of Israel, and over any questioning of the motives behind the Afghan war (or any “irresponsible” call for immediate withdrawal from Afghanistan).This also leads to (for example) hostile distancing from tactics that cross lines of legality — including black bloc operations wearing masks and the trashing of Starbucks. (And such distancing is often done by an appeal to the sensibilities of Mom and Pop, Joe Six-Pack and Main Street –without mentioning or acknowledging the refined and operative sensibilities of the ruling class).
The question (and questioning) of a single American nationality is another: To publicly argue that African American people are a distinct people, and the U.S. is a multi-national state (without a single American nationality) is considered a third rail for the liberal establishment. And when Lani Guenier made her arguments from inside the Clinton administration she was immediately fired, for precisely that reason.
And, though rarely mentioned, it is similarly a “third rail” to be an open atheist in American politics (though several major figures, including Barry Goldwater, have been closet atheists or cynics).
And you can tell, in many ways, who is arguing for remaining within the confines of bourgeois politics by the way they handle all of those issues.
There are also third rail issues that affect the right (as Joe McCarthy himself learned when he accused the military of being communist infiltrated). Among them are:
Theories that target the whole existing government system — as opposed to one branch (“socialist terrorist Obama”) of the current split establishment (Think Timothy McVeigh)
The most open expressions of white supremacy (think David Duke)
Open antisemitism and anti-Zionism (think “ZOG”)
Calling for armed resistance to state authority (think survivalists, the Order, or Branch Davidians)
And there are levels of prohibition:
There are “third rail” issues that prevent someone from holding or seeking office on behalf of the Democratic Party.
There are “third rail” issues that prevent someone from participating inside the Democratic Party (as a left leaning pressure group).
There are “third rail” issues that prevent you from being allowed on TV as a respectable and responsible commentator (a problem Noam Chomsky encounters).
Then there are “third rail” matters that send the FBI to kick down your doors (like meeting with the FALN in Colombia or the Palestinians in Palestine — as FRSO-FB experienced) — i.e. these are limits of legality, which are being redefined by presidential diktat and resulting resistance.
Finally there are politics and actions that can get you shot on sight regardless of their formal legality (including agitation for voter registration in the Jim Crow South, or following brutal police in Panther armed patrols in Oakland, or…)
Further, there is a constant discussion within the bourgeois political arena over what is permissible and what is not. The limits are not fixed — but are asserted and then reasserted with some sharp means. And there is an ongoing struggle over whether to tighten what is permissible or not
For example, the right wing Republicans have, in my whole lifetime insisted that much of the Democratic party should be criminalized as traitors, socialists and communists… not just from the John Birchers, but from the Joe McCarthy types, Oliver North, Glenn Beck and much of the Tea Party have had an ongoing discussion about criminalizing the left wing of the Democrats.
Social democratic "minders" insist that the left colors carefully within the lines (of bourgeois politics)
But meanwhile the Democratic establishment are also enforcers of what is acceptable (applying their own criteria). And we (on the left) have “minders” — people whose function it is to teach us to color within the lines — i.e. explain to us (over and over) the downside of going outside certain limits (a downside in the context of current official politics, which are assumed to be what is “real.”)
Our goals include precisely to help people get out of those confines. To imagine and create places they can “go.” To help expose and shatter the legitimacy and coherency of the Democratic Party. All while we participate in fighting and defeating the hard-core reactionary and fascist elements that are concentrated in the “other” party of this system.
We need to create an ongoing dialogue and (where possible) common struggle with the many progressive and oppressed people still inside the Democratic Party grassroots . And that is considerably different from seeking an ongoing alliance with the people inside the Democratic Party’s (imperialist) establishment. And our goals include making something much more radical into something much more “real” on the political stage — a goal that is (at its core and in its essence) a “third rail.”
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The imposition of limits on thought, on ideas that are unspeakable, is of course, common to the left as well, and we should fight it on the left as well as fighting it in mainstream discourse. Question and break the boundaries for what ideas are tolerated. All it takes is refuses to stay
http://kasamaproject.org/2011/01/15/the-third-rails-of-official-politics/
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
First let me point out that confining politics to what is acceptable to the bourgeoisie is done in the name of (a) focusing on what is possible, (b) maintaining alliances necessary for influencing current policy, (c) having a presence that is not offensive to mainstream pubic opinion, (d) slowly laying the basis now for further leaps of political consciousness later, and so on.
But in reality, the sum of those arguments is to confine oppositional politics to what is acceptable to a ruling class (and to leading elements in its sharply divided political establishment).
Let’s make that list here: Here are some things that the official political arena generally considers outside the realm of respectable debate. They operate as a kind of “third rail (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_rail_%28metaphor%29)” — touch them and you risk a political death.
Opposing Israel’s existence as a racist settler state (which has long served as a particularly abrupt “third rail” in U.S. politics).
Considering the U.S. an imperialist powers whose pretense of democracy masks cruder interests.
Arguing for socialized (social democratic) medicine is (generally) considered outside the pale of bourgeois political discussion in the U.S.
Advocating a right of violence for the oppressed, or questioning the monopoly of violence for the authorities. — it was very defining in Martin Luther King’s politics, which sought to shatter Jim Crow while remaining within a framework more-or-less acceptable to the larger non-southern imperialist ruling class (with the hope of having them allies, or at least neutralized).
Arguing that the traditional nuclear family is an institution that reproduces male supremacy — and that intimate relations need radical transformation.
Questioning the sanctity of the U.S. Constitution and the founding fathers.
Public advocacy of revolution, anti-capitalism and socialism (not the Bernie Sanders social-democratic kind)
In some cases it has to do with having open socialists and communists on speakers platforms and coalitions. This was evident in Vietnam days when the establishment liberals (and Michael Harrington their democratic socialist instrument within the “movement”) insisted that the antiwar movement needed a defacto anti-communist clause — and so two coalitions were formed and reformed throughout the Vietnam era, one containing the CPUSA and the other not containing them. But it came up more recently when Van Jones was accused of having earlier hardline Marxist Leninist politics, and sections of the political establishment thought that was too much to allow.
Support for international forces that are in strong (and armed) conflict with the U.S. — for example openly supporting the National Liberation Front in Vietnam, or openly supporting Cuba’s revolutionary government during the Bay of Pigs.
It is present in every debate of antiwar coalitions — with some (often dominant) forces acting as enforcers — and insisting that tactics, demands and tone have to be in line to their own hopes of becoming close allies of ruling liberals. It comes up over any mention of Israel, and over any questioning of the motives behind the Afghan war (or any “irresponsible” call for immediate withdrawal from Afghanistan).This also leads to (for example) hostile distancing from tactics that cross lines of legality — including black bloc operations wearing masks and the trashing of Starbucks. (And such distancing is often done by an appeal to the sensibilities of Mom and Pop, Joe Six-Pack and Main Street –without mentioning or acknowledging the refined and operative sensibilities of the ruling class).
The question (and questioning) of a single American nationality is another: To publicly argue that African American people are a distinct people, and the U.S. is a multi-national state (without a single American nationality) is considered a third rail for the liberal establishment. And when Lani Guenier made her arguments from inside the Clinton administration she was immediately fired, for precisely that reason.
And, though rarely mentioned, it is similarly a “third rail” to be an open atheist in American politics (though several major figures, including Barry Goldwater, have been closet atheists or cynics).
And you can tell, in many ways, who is arguing for remaining within the confines of bourgeois politics by the way they handle all of those issues.
There are also third rail issues that affect the right (as Joe McCarthy himself learned when he accused the military of being communist infiltrated). Among them are:
Theories that target the whole existing government system — as opposed to one branch (“socialist terrorist Obama”) of the current split establishment (Think Timothy McVeigh)
The most open expressions of white supremacy (think David Duke)
Open antisemitism and anti-Zionism (think “ZOG”)
Calling for armed resistance to state authority (think survivalists, the Order, or Branch Davidians)
And there are levels of prohibition:
There are “third rail” issues that prevent someone from holding or seeking office on behalf of the Democratic Party.
There are “third rail” issues that prevent someone from participating inside the Democratic Party (as a left leaning pressure group).
There are “third rail” issues that prevent you from being allowed on TV as a respectable and responsible commentator (a problem Noam Chomsky encounters).
Then there are “third rail” matters that send the FBI to kick down your doors (like meeting with the FALN in Colombia or the Palestinians in Palestine — as FRSO-FB experienced) — i.e. these are limits of legality, which are being redefined by presidential diktat and resulting resistance.
Finally there are politics and actions that can get you shot on sight regardless of their formal legality (including agitation for voter registration in the Jim Crow South, or following brutal police in Panther armed patrols in Oakland, or…)
Further, there is a constant discussion within the bourgeois political arena over what is permissible and what is not. The limits are not fixed — but are asserted and then reasserted with some sharp means. And there is an ongoing struggle over whether to tighten what is permissible or not
For example, the right wing Republicans have, in my whole lifetime insisted that much of the Democratic party should be criminalized as traitors, socialists and communists… not just from the John Birchers, but from the Joe McCarthy types, Oliver North, Glenn Beck and much of the Tea Party have had an ongoing discussion about criminalizing the left wing of the Democrats.
Social democratic "minders" insist that the left colors carefully within the lines (of bourgeois politics)
But meanwhile the Democratic establishment are also enforcers of what is acceptable (applying their own criteria). And we (on the left) have “minders” — people whose function it is to teach us to color within the lines — i.e. explain to us (over and over) the downside of going outside certain limits (a downside in the context of current official politics, which are assumed to be what is “real.”)
Our goals include precisely to help people get out of those confines. To imagine and create places they can “go.” To help expose and shatter the legitimacy and coherency of the Democratic Party. All while we participate in fighting and defeating the hard-core reactionary and fascist elements that are concentrated in the “other” party of this system.
We need to create an ongoing dialogue and (where possible) common struggle with the many progressive and oppressed people still inside the Democratic Party grassroots . And that is considerably different from seeking an ongoing alliance with the people inside the Democratic Party’s (imperialist) establishment. And our goals include making something much more radical into something much more “real” on the political stage — a goal that is (at its core and in its essence) a “third rail.”
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
The imposition of limits on thought, on ideas that are unspeakable, is of course, common to the left as well, and we should fight it on the left as well as fighting it in mainstream discourse. Question and break the boundaries for what ideas are tolerated. All it takes is refuses to stay