Those of us on the Left sometimes despair of the circular firing squads and insane arguments over minuscule trivia. However, that’s what we’re seeing yet again – deep concern over gender pronouns and safe spaces, the poison of identity politics, and obliviousness to a serious threat of a rising extreme right. Umair Haque as always, thinks outside the box. He says serious mistakes by the Left, focusing on fighting global neo-liberalism when it should have been opposing trickle-down economics at home, gave the extreme right room to grow. Further, the Left has mostly abdicated its traditional roles.
While the right was not just promulgating an unproven extremist economic faith [trickle-down economics], the left didn’t even understand what it was fighting. A generation of leftists decided instead that the true opposition wasn’t a right-wing economics locally—but a global politics they called “neoliberalism”. But much of neoliberalism, in stark opposition to trickle-down economics did in fact lift millions across the globe out of poverty, misery, and despair. Why? Because liberalism, however you choose to define it, is not trickle-down economics: it is precisely the opposite—investing in institutions, people, and societies, so that gluts do not pile up at the top.
The following paragraph will be controversial. However, he has a valid point. The World Bank is not an major enemy to the Left (and genuinely has helped some out of out poverty) especially as compared to the rising tide of ugly nationalism and xenophobia we’re seeing in Europe about refugees and from the Trump campaign at home. Emphasis added.
Yet, the left began targeting and protesting the very institutions that were defending the globe from trickle-down economics—the World Bank, the IMF, the UN. Of course, I’m sure that those of you who are leftists will quibble with me vehemently here, and call me a Terrible Person. But the simple fact is that the IMF and World Bank were created by Keynes precisely to prevent wealth piling up at the top—and that is precisely what they did. So you are only really proving your own dire and profound ignorance of economic history. I’m sorry to be harsh, but we must speak in blunt realities now.
And that tragic, historic, colossally stupid mistake”Š—”Što confuse trickle-down economics with liberalism, left with right”Š—”Šdamned the left to a path of total irrelevance. Instead of fighting the right, the left began fighting”¦itself.
Currently the Left is focused on irrelevancies.
If you don’t believe me, let’s ask the question: where is the left now? It will fight nobly and bravely for the cause of”¦trans characters in video games”¦gender pronouns”¦gender free bathrooms. But it is silent on the issue of New Fascism.
If you don’t believe me, let’s ask the question: where is the left now? It will fight nobly and bravely for the cause of”¦trans characters in video games”¦gender pronouns”¦gender free bathrooms. But it is silent on the issue of New Fascism. It organizes demonstrations, protests, and movements against the former”¦but not the latter. WTF! See what I mean? The left is fighting itself, fighting a more and more extreme fight against the left. But it is not fighting the right. Reasonable people can disagree over gender-free bathrooms”Š—”Šbut reasonable people cannot disagree about interment camps. Yet, while the left is consumed by sexual identity politics”Š—”Šfascist ideas are beginning to take over societies wholesale (for example, 47% of Americans approve of Trump’s proposal to “ban” Muslims). What can I liken all that to? It’s like getting a manicure”¦while gigantic oozing bacterial gangrene eats your leg”¦because you want a date.