The pivot to co-optation

[sabotabby]

 Pull up, kids, for another one of Aunt Sabotabby's predictions.

The good news is that the overt state repression of this round of demonstrations is almost over. The bad news is, hoo-boy. We're in for an interesting ride.

Here's what went on in Toronto last weekend: Black Lives Matter TO organized a march. Everyone knows who they are and who their main organizers are. They've been around for a long time. They have ties to various Black communities and can be trusted; if they put something out, we all know it's legit. The march was peaceful and orderly.

Here's what's happening in Toronto this weekend: Someone organized two marches. Who? We don't really know. It wasn't Black Lives Matter TO, because we all know who they are and they put out a statement saying it wasn't them. It wasn't any of the other established Black-led community or activist groups in the city. The name of yesterday's, March for Change, sounded a hell of a lot to me like that Kendall Jenner Pepsi commercial. Meanwhile, the medias, state-corporate and corporate-social, went ballistic. Shops boarded up their windows and doors in fear of Black Bloc protesters. BlogTO published a very funny "who are the Black Bloc?" article that I won't link to here because BlogTO sucks and I don't want to give them the hits, but basically it was like listening to your dad explain TikTok. Meanwhile, BLMTO and other trusted organizations suggested that activists, and in particular BIPOC activists, should probably not go wandering into this particular honeytrap.

So then what happened yesterday? There was some kind of a protest, I guess? Lots of people showed up thanks to the involvement of some Instagram kids I've never hear of because I'm old. One of my young comrades suggested that for all the confusion, the cops had organized themselves a pretty good protest! I don't know what's going to happen today but I'd be gobsmacked if there was any actual violence unless the cops decided to instigate it. And they have one glaringly good reason not to.

See, the other thing that happened yesterday is that at various demos, both Toronto Police Chief Mark Saunders and PM Prince Justin took a knee. This made for a great photo op. See! Our neoliberal politicians are on our side against this dastardly Trump! You're seeing it all over the US too, and the NFL apologized for being a shit to poor Colin Kaepernick and isn't it cool how we're somehow all on the same side now?

The coercion phase of the repression is over. It is failing and will continue to fail, because people are rightly pissed, even liberals, even some hard right types like Pat Robertson, who I didn't even know was still alive. As bad as things have gotten, you probably still can't convince large numbers of soldiers to shoot their own people in what are, if not their own neighbourhoods, then neighbourhoods that look like theirs. It's one thing to let suburban cops loose on urban communities, but the US has a poverty draft and there are a lot of reasons for joining the army that are not actually "being a complete dick." And the upper levels of the military probably look at Iraq and go, "nope, maybe we don't want something like that here."

Welcome to the co-optation phase.

There are two ways for an authoritarian government to retain power: Coercion and consent. Guess which one always, always works better? Look at surveillance—when I was growing up in the 80s and 90s, we had to read 1984 as a cautionary tale so that we didn't become Communists or whatever.* A modern adolescent, I can tell you, does not understand 1984. It literally makes no sense to them, because they've been under a far greater degree of surveillance their entire lives and they enthusiastically participate in it; in fact, they compete to be the best at it. The GDR would have spontaneous orgasms at the ease of finding out every detail of everyone's lives. It's just one of many ways that the Soviet Bloc won the Cold War.**

Coercion works to a point and then people get tired of it and hang their leaders from lampposts and such. Consent works much better. Co-optation is key to consent.

I've seen this happen throughout my lifetime. Nike sweatshops are bad! Young people do not want shoes made with child labour. So, protests! Boycotts! Oh no! This is threatening Nike's bottom line. Time for some intervention—say, the Kielburgers, bright-faced young white kids who collected the anti-sweatshop movement and turned it into the franchises Free the Children and Me to We, and set up a branch in every school. Now kids could earn volunteer hours and scholarships for holding bake sales against sweatshops. Everyone was Making Change and Being the Change, even our corporate partners. Then Nike puts Colin Kaepernick on its ads and suddenly it's a progressive thing to buy their shoes.†

True story: I went to the first BLMTO rally in Toronto. The main chant, I shit you not, was "Black lives matter! All lives matter!" A few days later "All lives matter" was a racist meme, as it still is. Co-option can happen very, very quickly.

The significance of Saunders and Trudeau taking a knee is now all of Kaepernick's trials and tribulations are robbed of their potency. If you have the guy in charge of racially profiling young Black men and the guy who sends the RCMP in with automatic weapons to shoot Indigenous land defenders standing in the way of his pipelines mimicking an anti-racist gesture, that gesture is no longer anti-racist. The far right has honed this strategy to perfection, having ruined, among others, Pepe the Frog, the OK symbol, milk, and now Hawaiian shirts. Now the message is confused, watered-down, and muddled to incoherency.

Co-optation is much, much harder to fight than coercion. You need to be skilled in media criticism, diversity of tactics, and organizing. It's a much less violent game long-term, but it's a thornier knot to untangle. And the everyday, systemic patterns don't change, obviously, so it's not not violent, but that violence becomes more distributed, less visible. Like it always is, but this time the people committing the violence are listening to you, and on your side.

Watch for it. 

* Hahaha no one ever learns about Orwell's actual politics.
** See also: Putin's control over the US and other countries' political systems, the validation of a command economy.
† No fault of Kaepernick, by the way. He needs to earn a living and get his message out any way possible. Co-optation is much more complicated than coercion.

Comments

[dewline]

Now, to keep the pressure on to make sure their deeds more closely match their performance. Co-opting can be made to work the other way, after all. It needs diligence, vigilance, and luck, yes...

[sabotabby]

For sure. I posted this for reasons of inoculation, not breeding despair.

[gingicat]

No disagreement.

Also, I've always been taught 1984 as an anti-totalitarian warning.

[sabotabby]

As well it should be! And also in the context of Orwell's communism and his history as a cop.

But meaning tends to get hammered down in education. I've never seen it taught properly, or Lord of the Flies. Handmaid's Tale is a little harder to get wrong.

[kore]

A cop in a colonized territory, no less! and he writes so well about the excitement and the degradation of having that kind of power. I didn't encounter anything like that again until much later in Paul Scott's Raj Quartet.

What is your take on Lord of the Flies? I think it's not supposed to be about human nature, but the writer originally meant it to be a devastating portrayal of the ruling British upper class. (Proof: David Cameron, Boris Johnson, need I go on....) But instead it gets turned into like "Rousseau was WRONG!" and IDEFK. (It was interesting, altho overlooked by most outlets I saw, that the "anti Lord-of-the-Flies" Triumph of the Human Spirit story that was being linked everywhere, was about Australian kids escaping a (probably culture-erasing) boarding school. Not a whole lot of assumed privilege there.

I know Heart of Darkness is supposedly about the evils of colonialism, but omfg I bounced off it every time I read it. (I bounced off a lot of Conrad, I don't even know why.) No Telephone to Heaven, otoh, was one of the first books I read (shamefully late) BY actual colonized people, with that stark slogan students tack up in response to a "KEEP BRITAIN WHITE" banner -- "as if in response, as if there could be a dialogue, a poster appeared the next day on a bulletin board: "WE ARE HERE BECAUSE YOU WERE THERE." Bam.

[sabotabby]

What is your take on Lord of the Flies? I think it's not supposed to be about human nature, but the writer originally meant it to be a devastating portrayal of the ruling British upper class.

That is totally what the message is, AFAIK. At the time there were all these boy's own adventure stories about how British boarding school kids would get stranded and civilize the indigenous population. Lord of the Flies was essentially, "fuck no, these places breed little monsters who would eat each other's faces." It's a commentary on British upper crust barbarism, not human nature in general.

I bounced off Heart of Darkness too. I did (and still do) love Apocalypse Now, but I come at it with the context of American film essentially erasing the Vietnamese from the invasion of their country, turning it into an intra-American conflict instead.

[kore]

That is totally what the message is, AFAIK. At the time there were all these boy's own adventure stories about how British boarding school kids would get stranded and civilize the indigenous population. Lord of the Flies was essentially, "fuck no, these places breed little monsters who would eat each other's faces." It's a commentary on British upper crust barbarism, not human nature in general.

I KNOW RIGHT! And the way they teach it in US schools it's just totally stripped of all cultural context. Which is not that uncommon for US schools, but re that book, it just kind of turns it into nonsense. (Remember that photo that got censored of David Cameron and his fellow horrors in that fucking club looking like they were ready to sack the earth? GAH.)

I bounced off Heart of Darkness too. I did (and still do) love Apocalypse Now, but I come at it with the context of American film essentially erasing the Vietnamese from the invasion of their country, turning it into an intra-American conflict instead.

I have a memory of some history class showing us the Ride of the Valkyries scene (why? I do not know, man. It was northern California in the late seventies) and some kids were laughing their heads off and a friend of mine had to run out before she got sick on the floor. Then when I got a little older my dad showed it to me as part of his Inappropriate Parental Movie Nights. My sister was part of the audience that saw a different version and she still had the T-shirt -- I think it said 'CHOOSE ME' on it.

I think one reason I was really annoyed by Heart of Darkness was the Intended or the Unreachable or whatever they fucking call her, and Marlow lies to her and she's all I WAS SURE OF IT HE WAS SUCH A GREAT MAN HE LOVED ME I LOVED HIM BESTEST and it's Symbolic of the Corruption of Civilization or some goddamn thing, and I was just like, Fuck you too, Joseph!

[dewline]

That, and Animal Farm.

[kore]

Oh yeah -- Orwell's v interesting, he was a raving socialist (one of his friends said somewhat wearily "He could not take out a handkerchief to blow his nose without discoursing on the conditions in the fabric industry") and actually went off to FIGHT in the Spanish Civil War, something none of his leftist buddies did. But he also really turned against Stalin (his indelible image was "Hitler and Stalin on a tandem bicycle") which put him totally at odds with the 1930s Leftists. I think he enjoyed being contrarian and pitched against everybody.

And Animal Farm -- talk about co-option. The first time I read that I was a kid (why do they give it to kids? Do they think it's like Wind in the Willows or Narnia?) and found it VERY CONFUSING. Then later I read an essay which laid it out like "The Major is Lenin, Napoleon is Stalin, Snowball is Trotsky, the cat is....well, being a cat" and I was all Ohhhh. And in the end the would-be revolutionaries, the thuggish farmers, are just the same -- brutish exploiters of the workers. I had actual nightmares about animal faces melting and changing. (THANKS, MOM AND DAD.)

[sabotabby]

I mean one can hardly blame him for turning against Stalin (being a cop and a colonizer is a different issue) but the man was a lifelong Trot and last I heard, Trots still count as communists.

[kore]

Oh I totally agree! But from what I've read the American and British leftist intellectuals just TURNED on him when he denounced Stalin. Like IIRC in her review of 1984? Mary McCarthy said it would have been better if he'd died rather than betray his principles. ("Better dead than not-enough Red....?")

[sara]

Yeah, having lived in Niketown, USA, you'll notice I don't buy fuck all of theirs, no matter who shills for them. I know what those people will do to your town, given the opportunity.

Kaepernick has to make a living but he picked a damn strange bedfellow there.

The disinformation is extraordinarily heavy right now.

[sabotabby]

His job is literally to play the game. My friend's partner wrote a really compelling paper on the proletarianization and racialization of professional sport, especially American football. It was before the whole Kaepernick thing but I wish very much he'd update it and post it somewhere I could link to. Basically I think despite his fame and money, Kaepernick's choices are/were limited, and I don't blame him for making the best choices he can with in a shitty framework.

[kore]

Yeah, US education for black kids in high schools and even colleges is really fucking bad, and it's often really bad for athletes on scholarships who are valued for their physical talents and bodies and not much else. And of course they're also literally putting themselves at risk for TBI and CTE and all kinds of other horrible physical injuries.

[robin_iamar]

It's even happening inside Corporate (public or private sector 'corporate') now - the pivots to "diversity and inclusion" training (after just... silence) which... I mean. I'm my workplace's 'mental health-diversity person" and as soon as I saw the 'should we Diversity And Inclusion?' start, I knew I'd be called on to get my group some form of it. It's... gawd, it's so performative and there's this push to go back to performing things and having that be good enough, and it's exhausting.

[sabotabby]

The school board is pretty bad. The union is also bad but at least there's internal pushback. We get sent mental wellness emails that do the opposite to me and include "African" and "Chinese" proverbs that were written by white missionaries.

They're quite good at adopting progressive language to ram through reactionary policy. Streaming is a real problem, with Black kids being forced into lower level classes, and families and teachers have been speaking out about it for years. And now they've finally decided to get rid of it! Yay! Except it's not because they give a shit about Black kids, but because you can pack more kids into academic classes, so you don't need as many teachers.

[smhwpf]

Everyone taking a knee, it's such a classic, does anyone even remember what taking a knee has to do with BLM? That you are saying you can only give qualified support to your national anthem so long as police brutality and systemic racism continue? So is Trudeau going to take a knee when they sing O Canada?

But more importantly of course is he going to stop trying to force a pipeline through unceded First Nations territory. Clearly not.

I think the positive is that many, many more people recognize that systemic racism, specifically in the police, is a problem. The polls in the US show that the percentage who think that has gone up massively since Ferguson, I think from 49% to 74%. Which is a big step up from what was won in the '60s, most people agreeing that "racism is bad" and that "skin colour shouldn't matter", but then congratulating themselves on not being racist and pretending the problem had gone away.

Now that first change was associated with genuine gains, so the big question is how can the current sea change in perceptions be translated into genuine gains? Some positive signs in terms of police reform and the fact that it's possible to talk about more radical ideas like abolition, It's probably going to need both active street protests and a cogent political strategy for identifying what specific demands can be pushed at a Congressional/Parliamentary/State/Provincial level that have a chance of getting enough of a coalition around them to get through.

My recollection of Orwell (I went through a big teen fanboy phase, when I read most of his essays and papers, and most novels, though I bounced off Coming Up For Air), is that he described himself as a Socialist rather than a Communist. A pretty darned radical one, and of course he was with the Poum militia who were Trotskyite, but I don't think he ever described himself as a Trot. I think he was ambivalent about the idea of Revolution; certainly supporting it when seeing it in action in Spain, but I'm not sure he saw it as the way to go in Britain. Of course, he died at a time when it might still have been possible to hope that the Post-War Labour government might lead to the sort of radical change he would have liked to see.

[kore]

I still love Orwell! His prose is great. Some of his conclusions are awful, but I think he would be happy people are still arguing over his work.

I think he had that experience in Spain and was basically like "fuck all you politicians and theorists who talk a lot about justice but screw everyone over just as badly if not moreso than the rightist establishment." If you read some of the contemporary critiques of 1984 and his later essays -- like Mary McCarthy's -- there's this intense feeling Leftists had of disappointment and even disgust, like, he they just couldn't believe he was openly anti-Stalinist (this was when all those New York intellectuals signed the "Stalin is super" petition/loyalty statement or whatever it was). He has a lot in common with the political part of the plot in Doris Lessing's The Golden Notebook: the young activist who becomes intensely disillusioned with the leftist movement, and is like: what fucking now?

[sabotabby]

It's gotta fuck you up to deal with the betrayal that was Stalinism.

Though, to hear the one Spanish Civil War vet I knew tell it, the POUM did their share of fucked up shit too.

[sabotabby]

I think the sea change in opinion is important, and much more significant ultimately than any one specific gesture. But yeah, I don't think Trudeau's going to take a knee for O Canada.

I guess it's a matter of whether people can keep up momentum, particularly in a situation that in the next 14 days, a significant percentage of them are going to be extremely sick.

[minoanmiss]

*reads and takes notes*
May I link to this?

[sabotabby]

Always!

[kore]

Sadly OT (sorry!) but I saw this sign and thought of you, I loved it:

https://twitter.com/ngelvsworld/status/1269394728602136577

Big crowd marching up thru our neighbourhood now -- maybe 1K? -- NO cops that I can see, also NO FUCKING CHOPPER ready to buzz people. Hopefully no fucking Nat Guard or prison guards flown in from fucking Texas or AZ either.

[sabotabby]

Ahhh I love it.

I hope everyone is okay. <3

[kore]

What I saw on the news (altho I haven't been submerging myself in it like the past couple days) was

LOTS of medical students, medical professionals, protesting outside (with neatly done social distancing markers!), taking a knee, saying that racism is endemic and causes tons of problems with vulnerable populations, and institutional racism and governmental neglect has made the pandemic even worse for them. Fucking bravo.

There were like 1K people going up Pine I think! that was what someone guesstimated anyway. NO FUCKING HELICOPTERS. Very light sprinkling of cops apparently. No Natioal Guard?? Well, fuck me sidewise.

No guarantee of what might happen at nightfall, of course, but that's past nine o'clock now. When the curfew lifted there were 100 and then a couple of dozen people who stayed all the way through the night, JUST TO MAKE A POINT, and volunteers brought them Top Pot doughnuts and coffee. (I'm kinda pissed and heartbroken I can't be out there, but I figure donating also helps.)

[sabotabby]

Someone I care about a whole bunch was out with the medical workers. At least I know they'll mask up properly.

[kore]

I still cannot fucking believe the cops have all that riot equipment, shields helmets tear gas rubber bullets CHOPPERS on and on, and the health care workers have to make their own masks, and conserve what they have and re-use it, while they're trying to make sure infected people don't die. Like, as a morality play, it doesn't get much staker than that.

[sabotabby]

There's so many stark illustrations like that. The other horrendous one for me is Breonna Taylor, who was not just a young, innocent woman whose life was inherently valuable, but was an EMT of all things, one of the most important possible people during a pandemic, and murdering her not only took her life but the lives of everyone she could have conceivably saved.

The world needs a big ethical reset.

[kore]

Breonna Taylor, who was not just a young, innocent woman whose life was inherently valuable, but was an EMT of all things

Yeah, who WAS ASLEEP, no less. Murdered in her sleep! W T FFFFFFFFFF

[sabotabby]

While they had the supposed suspect in custody.

[kore]

ARRRGH NO NOW THERE ARE CHOPPERS

GOD FUCKING DAMN IT

I hate them personally because they're fucking LOUD and set off my anxiety, AND I don't want to see kids get fucking buzzed with a "show of force," AND they're meant to COW regular citizens. FUCK OOOOOOOOOFF

[sabotabby]

What is even the point of choppers beyond intimidation???

[kore]

Maybe they all grew up on Apocalypse Now! "KICK IN THE WAGNER, DAVE"

(obvs missing the point of the flick ENTIRELY)

T is going out on the back fire steps now (fenced off with chainlink, grr) to see if he can get footage of the choppers HANGING over our house -- I tried a couple days ago but my phone is dinky. His has a fancy zoom function.

[kore]

Well, now we got choppers, flashbangs at a MEDIC TENT, tear gas they said they weren't going to be using anymore, cops in riot gear and the National Guard. No curfew tho. Not yet.

https://twitter.com/GoldsteinStreet ongoing pix/video if you're interested

[sabotabby]

That is some bullshit.

[kore]

It got scary bad in Portland too.

[kore]

Also omfg talk about the shifting Overton window: Jacob Frey, who looks like Prince Justin's more whitebread twin, showed up at a Minneapolis protest. This is where Al Sharpton JUST gave what Maddow said was "a eulogy for the ages" for George Floyd. Frey was filmed at that service sobbing like a baby. He shows up at the protest and gets asked about defunding police and starts going fumfuh-fumfuh union blah blah reform blee blee. The woman with the mike says YES OR NO ANSWER and reminds everyone he is up for re-election and asks him again. Fucker says no and gets booed off so loudly he literally looks like a little kid running home to mommy. He has to walk off through this huge throng of people all chanting "SHAME, SHAME, SHAME" at him. DAMN.

(And as one person rightfully said, bro, you showed up at a Defund the Police protest and said no, you would not do that, what the fuck did you think would happen)

https://twitter.com/BethLynch2020/status/1269426371740217350

https://twitter.com/nytimes/status/1269460338329739264

[sabotabby]

Hah, that was on the radio when I woke up this morning.

An action item like defund the police is much more difficult to co-opt than a symbolic gesture. Not impossible (that's what my last post was about), but much harder.

[kore]

I had like two different-level responses to that:

1) Higher level: Dude if you are THAT CLUELESS about what an impassioned, mixed-race, longing-for-justice GIANT rally of people want in a dialogue with someone being called upon to HELP FIX INJUSTICE, you don't deserve to represent that population, not even as city dogcatcher

2) Lower Machiavellian level: DUDE WTF WERE YOU THINKING HOW COULD YOU READ A ROOM THAT POORLY YOU ARE A POLITICIAN! DID YOU GET TALKING POINTS DURING A SEANCE WHERE YOU CALLED UP THE GHOST OF ROY FUCKING COHN?

[sabotabby]

Both levels +1

[kore]

Did you see THIS??

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/07/us/protests-today-george-floyd-video.html#link-512cff3a

Nine members — a veto-proof majority — of the Minneapolis City Council pledged on Sunday to dismantle the city’s Police Department, promising to create a new system of public safety in a city where law enforcement has long been accused of racism.

Saying that the city’s current policing system could not be reformed, the council members stood before hundreds of people who gathered late in the day on a grassy hill, and signed a pledge to begin the process of taking apart the Police Department as it now exists.


Also Cheeto Benito is supposedly sending the Guard troops home, altho I will believe that when I fucking do not see men in camouflage backing up the fucking cops here.

Announcing his order on Twitter, Mr. Trump said the National Guard soldiers would withdraw “now that everything is under perfect control.”

“They will be going home, but can quickly return, if needed,” he wrote. “Far fewer protesters showed up last night than anticipated!”

(In fact, the daylong protests in Washington on Saturday appeared to draw larger crowds than earlier rallies.)

I just don't get how he can fucking lie, and his lies can be corrected, EVERYWHERE, and are so obvious even if they aren't IMMEDIATELY pointed out, and yet nothing ever fucking sticks. I've heard about deliberate chaos and disinformation and theories his batshit supporters enjoy him "pulling one over" on people (including them?), but I will never be not shocked by it. And I lived through Reagan lying about "Cadillac welfare queens," Shrub I lying about the CIA and war, Shrub II lying more about the CIA and more wars, and Clinton going "I. Did. Not. Sleep. With. That. Woman. Miss Lewinsky" live on TV. This is like something of a different kind altogether. He just turns reality into silly putty.

[sabotabby]

Did you see THIS??

I did! Best news all day.

I just don't get the lying thing either. I should be used to it by now but it's like he says something and it's such an obvious like, and people point it out, and it somehow doesn't matter. And then he makes a completely different lie the next day. It's an obvious gaslighting strategy.

[kore]

Also, "defund the police" seems to have been turned by the right and accepted by white liberals as "abolish the police," which makes me despair.

(will stop ranting in yr comments now!)

[sabotabby]

I'm also fine with abolishing the police!

[kore]

Yeah, it just sucks because now Trumpty et al will be like 'THE DEMOCRATS WANT TO ABOLISH THE POLICE AND THE ANTIFA WILL MURDER YOU IN YOUR BEDS,' and the media will repeat it, and there goes the fucking meaning of the word and a few dems will be all 'That is not what it means!' and most of them will cower and there goes fucking police reform. //cynical

[metawidget]

*comes up from Orwell Wikipedia article rabbit hole*

Wow, yeah: complicated fellow.

[sabotabby]

Indeed.

[lapinlunaire]

*takes notes*

[sabotabby]

I'm morbidly curious to see if I'm correct. But also I hate being right.