"Liberals are clearly not principled anti-fascists, the geopolitical compromises are too numerous to count, and there is an obvious cynical PR/fundraising logic to the fascist threat: ‘Can you spare $5 to defeat fascism?’ However, liberals are emotionally invested in the idea that they are the ones who can beat back the scourge of fascism. They construct anti-fascism as a class project but self-identify as the class of elites and experts that fascism uses to obfuscate actual class struggle...
What has been remarkable about the liberal political commentariat’s reaction to Trump’s outrages and Bernie Sanders’ successes has been its collective nature. Sanders’ social-democratic candidacy elicited horror as the progressive parallel to the Trump movement in the liberal nerve centers of Vox, Politico and Slate. The uniformity of this reaction in the liberal media and millennial online journalism spheres has been most perplexing as the Sanders campaign was objectively an extraordinary story. Thomas Frank convincingly advances the notion in his new book that American liberals function as a class, not in objective economic terms but in the devotion of professionals to the meritocracy. These are the people whose hearts bleed for diversity in boardrooms and Hollywood blockbusters, who believe entrepreneurs should get student loan debt forgiveness and that equality will be achieved through inner city youths learning how to code or attending a free performance of Hamilton. In constructing progressive politics as the combination of affect and technocracy, as opposed to ideology, struggle and justice, the rebellion of the Sanders youth and the surging fascism of Trump both represent the grubby politics of street fighting...
until liberalism can antagonistically define itself with a genuine left conscience it will continue to be wracked by the fascist nightmare."
It's real though - what is the definition of "liberal"? "Democrat"? What are the principles and values, what unites people under these terms? To me, as someone who grew up in aggressively liberal Democratic territory, I have a lot of trouble articulating what we are without leaning on comparisons to conservatives and Republicans.
And that flexibility definitely helps liberal/Democrat politicians, who can create new definitions that motivate people to either become rabid supporters of some policy or politician or fear losing their identities.
FB: This was an excellent read - can anyone actually define what it means to be a "liberal", or what it is that the Democratic Party stands for?
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