“In the world SAFE claims for Carol, itself, and viewers, there are no safe social spaces, no safe healthcare practices, no safe critical perspectives, and, lest we forget, no safe cinema.”
Here are the concluding minutes of the interview. A dry, verbal excerpt from the full interview doesn't quite capture the flow of leading questions and Sander's responses and how Sanders's maintained a dignified posture throughout with a hostile host.
(Compare with Maddow's warm, sympathetic interview with Elizabeth Warren the following day.)
Should the Democratic establishment think nominating Bloomberg will not only defeat Trump but also help preserve its control over the party, Democratic leaders may be in for a nasty surprise. In their minds Bloomberg may be a stone that can kill two birds (Trump and Sanders) but Bloomberg’s actions are also those of a corporate raider engaged in a hostile take-over bid of a company faced with implacable competition (the GOP) and burdened with a sclerotic, inept management (the DNC) and falling stock price (after the failed attempt to remove Trump and the Iowa caucus fiasco), and over which frustrated employees (liberals and progressives) now wish to assume ownership.
Part Two of a two-part article on how the Democratic Party and its liberal and progressive allies should anticipate and counter rightwing political intimidation and violence. I argue that if ignored, such violence could threaten to undo the achievements of the Blue Wave and cause to founder the best efforts of Indivisible, Swing Left, and other new activist organizations to “pave the way to the post-Trump era” (Indivisible on Offense, p. 2).
Part Two reviews the challenges of dealing with the threat of rightwing domestic terrorism in the U.S. as a political problem and proposes possible responses to it as an existential threat to democratic institutions and progressive values.
First part of two-part article: 'Indivisible on Offense' and Galvanizing the Democratic Party in the Current Climate of Political Violence"
It is a response to the publication of Indivisible.org's new battle plan, "Indivisible on Offense: A Practical Guide to the New Democratic House."
Part 2 (due out next Monday): "Countering Acts of Political Violence & Domestic Terrorism"
"Today, in light of the electoral Blue Wave that caught most observers by surprise, and the release last week by Indivisible.org of its new activist guide (Indivisible on Offense: A Practical Guide to the New Democratic House), I want to offer several ideas about not only how to anticipate and counter political violence but also how over the next two years Democrats — and liberals and progressives generally — should confront Republican acts of intimidation.
"I want to argue that confronting the aggressive tactics of such remorseless opponents will require a transformation of the Democratic Party in terms of its self-image, public postures, and overall approach to political conflict in governmental institutions and the public media. As a Hungarian colleague, who has watched apprehensively as the U.S. has edged closer to the kind of legal authoritarianism or illiberal democracy already in place in his home country, put it, thanks to the Blue Wave, 'Democracy in America is now back on life support.'
"But absent changes in Democratic politics and a strategy for countering political intimidation and violence, the best efforts of Indivisible and other new activist organizations to “pave the way to the post-Trump era” (Indivisible on Offense, p. 2) may well founder."
We’ve Been Here Before: Political Violence’s Transformative Power
Author’s Note: Just as I was finishing this essay, the mass shooting at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh occurred, one of the most violent anti-Semitic acts in modern American history.
In Plain Sight
As federal and local law enforcement agencies pursue their investigation of the multiple pipe-bombing attempts targeting Democratic politicians and Donald Trump’s critics, the horror of this act of domestic political terrorism shouldn’t make us forget that we have been here before and that the current crisis is one in a long series of threats and actual acts of physical violence going back many years. Politicians, the mainstream news outlets, and pundits are struggling to come to grips with the gravity of the situation and the necessity of developing concrete counterstrategies but the evidence that this exact scenario was in the offing has been in plain sight for some time.
References have begun to crop up in social media to the over 40 bombings of abortion clinics in the U.S. as well as to deadly LGBTQT bashings but apparently absent from public memory is the call to armed insurrection issued by Fox News host Glenn Beck and CNN’s Lou Dobbs right after Barack Obama’s January 2009 inauguration, for which they paid no penalty.
Harvey Weinstein is at the top of not just one list but two: that of sexual harassers and aggressors but also another one of abusive, tyrannical CEOs.
Both Harvey and his brother Bob belonged to various lists of America’s toughest bosses publicized by a largely admiring business press including Fortune and Business Week starting in 1980. Journalists and editors underscored their tyrannical and abusive management styles and praised their willingness to make "hard" decisions, such as downsizing middle management, cutting wages, and ordering massive layoffs during the heady days of the go-go 1980s and 1990s of corporate raiders, leveraged-buyouts (LBOs), and company mergers.
Articles included the names of Steve Jobs (NeXT Computing), Donald Rumsfeld (G.D. Searle Pharmaceuticals), Carl Icahn (TWA), Andrew Grove (Intel), and Jack Welch (General Electric). Many of those names are still with us--and so is their management style.
Author’s Note: this is the second installment in a four-part series on the current public climate of fear and intimidation that since the kick-off of the last presidential campaign in 2015 has dominated national life in the United States to a degree not seen in a long while. In Part One, “The Emotional Toll of Public Bullying and Political Intimidation,” the focus was on the experience of the sheer power and psychological effects of bullying in general and public bullying and political intimidation in particular. Below in Part Two, I now look at how public bullying works as a concrete method and set of political tools: I examine specific devices and tactics that will provide readers something of a practical guide through this potent minefield and a way to anticipate future acts of aggression. As we approach the midterm elections, the hope is to provide readers with some protective mental armor against the daily barrage of assaults.
In the wake of the tumultuous Kavanaugh hearings marked by wrenching accusations of sexual assault and extreme examples of political bullying, in Part Three I focus on the two major political parties to explore why over the years Republicans and their right-wing supporters have freely resorted to extremely aggressive political tactics and — just as important — why Democratic Party leaders and their liberal allies have often failed to take seriously such acts of political violence and skullduggery by their opponents and respond accordingly. Part of the answer, I argue, lies in their respective practices of loyalty and identity, social composition, and conceptions of governing.
Tues., Oct. 16: Book Reading & Discussion, Berkeley Public Library, "Confronting Public Bullying with Roddey Reid"
Why does political bullying take such an emotional toll on citizens and residents?
How do political intimidation and public bullying work in a “post-truth” era?
How is the current harsh public climate a challenge to those involved in civic action or political activity?
How can we overcome it?
Author’s Note: this is the first installment in a series on the current public climate of fear and intimidation that since the kick-off of the last presidential campaign in 2015 has dominated national life in the United States. In particular I look at how this toxic environment has poisoned our politics and even reached into our very relationships with friends, co-workers, neighbors, and family members. Next up is Part Two: “How the Public Climate of Fear and Intimidation Works.”
Excerpt:
“We think we know who they are: they cut you off on the highway, they taunt you to your face, mock you behind your back, smirk at you from the TV screen, standing always beyond reach. They are everywhere and anywhere, from the schoolyard to the boardroom, the office cubicle to your local bar. They come unbidden, visiting violence upon the unsuspecting and the fearful alike. They now lurk even in your pocket wherever you go, and you can feel the buzz as trolls spew 140-character poison to anyone and everyone. Even at home you can’t get away from the pervasive climate of intimidation and disrespect: you turn on your TV or laptop and there they are, injecting venom and fear through old and new media. Requiring little or no provocation, they are poised to strike at the first sign of weakness — or courage. For they tolerate no one, no one but their own kind — belligerent bullies ready to declare who is fit to speak, to listen, and to submit.”
SUMMARY
- intimidation as a political and theoretical problem
- traumatic lessons
- taking political violence seriously
- political intimidation vs. everyday bullying
- from political tool to an entire political program & form of governing
- how it works
- affective challenges to civic action and activism
- resistance: a nimble politics of anticipation
- creating our own affective facts on the ground
THEORETICAL FRAME
My thinking has been in conversation with the work of Étienne Balibar on citizenship, globalization, extreme violence and the State, Wendy Brown’s deep inquiry into the political project of neoliberalism of “dedemocratization,” Judith Butler’s and Brian Massumi’s respective writings on lawless sovereignty, indefinite detention, and the affective politics of preemption in the endless War on Terror, and Corey Robin’s book on fear as an operative concept in the liberal political tradition.