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January 2021 is not yet over – but it seems as though (in the US at least) a restorationist centrism is winning both against the Goya monster that is the Trump project and against the massive popular uprisings of 2020. Winning for now. /1
So how do we understand the ongoing crisis of neoliberalism – and what does this mean for #SocialMovements? Back in 2014 @alfgunvald and I wrote this: /2
One of the key points we saw from looking at previous changes of this kind is the *experimental* nature of elite (and popular) attempts to replace an old way of doing things. /3
Projects like Trump or Brexit start with the loons – and if they can gather enough popular support, various elite fractions and other actors will row in behind them (as we have seen with Tories and Republicans). /4
If the project-of-the-day stops delivering the goods, it will be ditched – or the coalition will fragment. But social movements from below can also force this kind of fragmentation. Here’s what we said in 2016: /5
If we are serious about opposing these projects, we need to drop the clever-clever accounts of Structure that amount to dressing up one specific experiment as if it was always going to be this way–and look at the agency of those involved, and the weaknesses of the experiment: /6
We actually already know this if we're not in the US, and have the wit not to talk about US (or UK) politics as tho it was global. The differences between countries - and between projects w/in one country - tell us this. /7
This does not ofc mean that we aren’t still looking at capitalism, racism and patriarchy, under Biden as under Trump. It means that if we want to go beyond Biden or Trump & beyond those systems we have to see the provisional nature of either coalition, and their weaknesses. /8
Put another way: /9
The Trump and Brexit projects are not the same as the Polish and Hungarian one, or the Turkish and Indian one, etc. Nor are the movements the same – we have to look at where we are, and try to understand it beyond punditry, incl left/liberal punditry. /10
In Ireland, as in many west European countries, we are facing more of a Biden-like coalition: the defenders of a shrinking neoliberal centrism, playing with fascist fire in the face of repeated movements from below. /11
This has implications for what we spend our time doing – even on here: /12
We need to choose whose expertise we listen to, signal boost and engage with - acs, hacks or movements: /13
In 2016 we underlined that Trump's coalition was "no new hegemonic force, or not yet": /14
Finishing on this /15
Those last two quotes from https://www.plutobooks.com/blog/trump-brexit-and-the-twilight-of-neoliberalism-by-laurence-cox-and-alf-gunvald-nilsen/
