The conservative movement is cracking up
I'll be in Stratford, Ontario, appearing onstage with Vass Bednar as part of the CBC IDEAS Festival. I'm also doing an afternoon session for middle-schoolers at the Stratford Public Library.
Politics always requires coalitions. In parliamentary democracies, the coalitions are visible, when they come together to form the government. In a dictatorship, the coalitions are hidden to everyone except infighting princelings and courtiers (until a general or minister is executed, exiled or thrown in prison.)
In a two-party system, the coalitions are inside the parties – not quite as explicit as the coalition governments in a multiparty parliament, but not so opaque as the factions in a dictatorship. Sometimes, there are even explicit structures to formalize the coalition, like the Biden Administration's Unity Task Force, which parceled out key appointments among two important blocs within the party (the finance wing and the Sanders/Warren wing).
Conservative politics are also a coalition, of course. As an outsider, I confess that I am much less conversant with the internal power-struggles in the GOP and the conservative movement, though I'm trying to remedy that. Books like Nathan J Robinson's Responding to the Right present a great overview of various conservative belief-systems:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/14/nathan-robinson/#arguendo
And the Know Your Enemy podcast does an amazing job of diving deep into right-wing beliefs, especially when it comes to identifying fracture lines in the conservative establishment. A recent episode on the roots of contemporary right-wing antisemitism in the paleocon/neocon split was hugely informative and fascinating:
https://www.dissentmagazine.org/blog/know-your-enemy-in-search-of-anti-semitism-with-john-ganz/
Political parties are weak institutions, liable to capture and hospitable to corruption. General elections aren't foolproof or impervious to fraud, but they're miles more robust than parties, whose own leadership selection processes and other key decisions can be made in the shadows, according to rules that can be changed on a whim:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/30/weak-institutions/
Which means that parties are brittle, weak vessels that we rely on to contain the volatile mixture of factions who might actually hate each other, sometimes even more than they hate the other party. Remember the defenestration of GOP House Speaker Kevin McCarthy? That:
https://apnews.com/article/mccarthy-gaetz-speaker-motion-to-vacate-congress-327e294a39f8de079ef5e4abfb1fa555
Even outsiders like me know that there's a deep fracture in the Republican Party, with Trumpists on one side and the "establishment" on the other side. Reading accounts of the 2016 GOP leadership race, I get the distinct impression that Trump's win was even more shocking to party insiders than it was to the rest of us.
Which makes sense. They thought they had the party under control, knew where its levers were and how to pull them. For us, Trump's win was a terrible mystery. For GOP power-brokers, it was a different kind of a nightmare, the kind where you discover that controls to the the car you're driving in high-speed traffic aren't connected to anything and you're not really the driver.
But as Trump's backers – another coalition – fall out among each other, it's becoming easier for the rest of us to understand what happened. Take FBI informant Peter Thiel's defection from the Trump camp:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/11/12/silicon-valley-billionaire-donors-presidential-candidates/
Thiel was the judas goat who led tech's reactionary billionaires into Trump's tent, blazing a trail and raising a fortune on the way. Thiel's support for Trump was superficially surprising. After all, Thiel is gay, and Trump's running mate, Mike Pence, openly swore war on queers of all kinds. Today, Thiel has rebuffed Trump's fundraising efforts and is reportedly on Trump's shit-list.
But as a Washington Post report – drawing heavily on gossiping anonymous insiders – explains. Thiel has never let homophobia blind him to the money and power he stands to gain by backing bigots:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/11/12/silicon-valley-billionaire-donors-presidential-candidates/
Thiel bankrolled Blake Masterson's Senate race, despite Masterson's promise to roll back marriage equality – and despite the fact that Masterton attended Thiel's wedding to another man.
According to the post, the Thiel faction's abandonment of Trump wasn't driven by culture war issues. Rather, they were fed up with Trump's chaotic, undisciplined governance strategy, which scuttled many opportunities to increase the wealth and power of America's oligarchs. Thiel insiders complained that Trump's "character traits sabotaged the policy changes" and decried Trump's habit of causing "turmoil and chaos…that would interfere with his agenda" rather than "executing relentlessly."
For Trump's base, the cruelty might be the point. But for his backers, the cruelty was the tactic, and the point was money, and the power it brings. When Trump seemed like he might use cruel tactics to achieve power, his backers went along for the ride. But when Trump made it clear that he would trade opportunities for power solely to indulge his cruelty, they bailed.
That's an important fracture line in the modern American conservative coalition, but it's not the only one.
Writing in the BIG newsletter, Matt Stoller and Lee Hepner describes the emerging conservative split over antitrust and monopoly:
https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/is-there-an-establishment-plan-to
Antitrust has been the centerpiece of the Biden Administration's most progressive political project. For the left wing of the Dems, blunting corporate power is seen as the necessary condition for rolling back the entire conservative program, which depends on oligarch-provided cash infusions, media campaigns, and thinktank respectability.
But elements of the right have also latched onto antitrust, for reasons of their own. Take the Catholic traditionalists who see weakening corporate power as a path to restoring a "traditional" household where a single breadwinner can support a family:
https://www.capitalisnt.com/episodes/when-capitalism-becomes-tyranny-with-sohrab-ahmari
There's another reason to support antitrust, of course – it's popular. There are large, bipartisan majorities opposed to monopoly and in favor of antitrust action:
https://d3nkl3psvxxpe9.cloudfront.net/documents/Antitrust_Policy_poll_results.pdf
Two-thirds of Americans support anti-monopoly laws. 70% of Americans say monopolies are bad for the economy. The Biden administration is doing more on antitrust than any presidency since the Carter years, but 52% of Americans haven't heard about it:
https://www.ft.com/content/c17c35a3-e030-4e3b-9f49-c6bdf7d3da7f
There's a big opportunity latent in the facts of antitrust's popularity, and the Biden antitrust agenda's obscurity. So far, the Biden administration hasn't figured out how to seize that opportunity, but some Dems are trying to grab it. Take Montana Senator John Tester, a Democrat in a Trump-voting state, whose campaign has taken aim at the meat-packing monopolies that are screwing the state's ranchers.
The right wants in on this. At a Federalist Society black-tie event last week during the National Lawyer's Convention, Biden's top antitrust enforcers got a warm welcome. Jonathan Kanter, the DOJ's top antitrust cop, was praised onstage by Todd Zywicki, whom Stoller and Hepner call "a highly influential law professors," from George Mason Univeristy, a fortress of pro-corporate law and economics. Zywicki praised the DoJ and FTC's new antitrust guidelines – which have been endlessly damned in the WSJ and other conservative outlets – as a reasonable and necessary compromise:
https://fedsoc.org/events/national-press-club-event
Even Lina Khan – the bogeywoman of the WSJ editorial page – got a warm reception at her fireside chat:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0FwdAxOSznE
And the convention's hot Saturday ticket was "a debate between two conservatives over whether social media platforms had sufficient monopoly power that the state could regulate them as common carriers":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rwoO7bZajXk
This is pretty amazing. And yet…lawmakers haven't gotten the memo. During markup for last week's appropriations bill, lawmakers inserted a flurry of anti-antitrust amendments into the must-pass legislation:
https://www.economicliberties.us/press-release/fsgg-approps-bill-must-support-enforcers-not-kneecap-them/#
These amendments were just wild. Rep Scott Fitzgerald (R-WI) introduced an amendment that would give companies carte blanche to stick you with unlimited junk fees, and allow corporations to take away their workers' rights to change jobs through noncompetes:
https://www.congress.gov/congressional-report/118th-congress/house-report/269
Another amendment would block the FTC from enforcing against "unfair methods of competition." Translation: the FTC couldn't punish companies like Amazon for using algorithms to hike prices, or for conspiring to raise insulin prices, or its predatory pricing aimed at killing small- and medium-sized grocers.
An amendment from Rep Kat Cammack (R-FL) would kill the FTC's "click to cancel" rule, which will force companies to let you cancel your subscriptions the same way you sign up for them – instead of making you wait on hold to beg a customer service rep to let you cancel.
Another one: "a provision to let auto dealers cheat customers with undisclosed added fees":
https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/BILLS-118hr4664rh/pdf/BILLS-118hr4664rh.pdf
Dems got in on the action, too. A bipartisan pair, Rep Thomas Massie (R-KY) and Rep Lou Correa (D-FL), unsuccessfully attempted to strip the Department of Transport of its powers to block mergers, which were most recently used to block the merger of Jetblue and Spirit:
https://www.congress.gov/amendment/118th-congress/house-amendment/640
And 206 Republicans voted to block the DoT from investigating airline price-gouging. As Stoller and Hepner point out, these reps serve constituents from low-population states that are especially vulnerable to this kind of extraction.
This morning, Jim Jordan hosted a Judiciary Committee meeting where he raked DOJ antitrust boss Jonathan Kanter over the coals, condemning the same merger guidelines that Zywicki praised to the Federalist Society:
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/7jxc8dp8erhe1q3wpndre/GOP-oversight-hearing-memo-11.13.23.pdf?rlkey=d54ur91ry3mc69bta5vhgg13z&dl=0
Jordan's prep memo reveals his plan to accuse Kanter of being an incompetent who keeps failing in his expensive bids to hold corporate power to account, and being an all-powerful government goon who's got a boot on the chest of American industry. Stoller and Hepner invoke the old Yiddish joke: "The food at this restaurant is terrible, and the portions are too small!"
Stoller and Hepner close by wondering what to make of this factional split in the American right. Is it that these members of the GOP Congressional caucus just haven't gotten the memo? Or is this a peek at what corporate lobbyists home to accomplish after the 2024 elections?
They suggest that both Democrats and Republican primary contesters in that race could do well by embracing antitrust, "Establishment Republicans want you to pay more for groceries, healthcare, and travel, and are perfectly fine letting monopoly corporations make decisions about your daily life."
I don't know if Republicans will take them up on it. The party's most important donors are pathologically loss-averse and unwilling to budge on even the smallest compromise. Even a faint whiff of state action against unlimited corporate power can provoke a blitz of frenzied scare-ads. In New York state, a proposal to ban noncompetes has triggered a seven-figure ad-buy from the state's Business Council:
https://www.timesunion.com/state/article/noncompete-campaign-raises-state-lobbying-18442769.php
It's hard to overstate how unhinged these ads are. Writing for The American Prospect, Terri Gerstein describes one: "a hammer smashes first an alarm clock, then a light bulb, with shards of glass flying everywhere. An ominous voice predicts imminent doom. Then, for good measure, a second alarm clock is shattered":
https://prospect.org/labor/2023-11-10-business-groups-reflexive-anti-worker-demagogy/
Banning noncompetes is good for workers, but it's also unambiguously good for business and the economy. They "reduce new firm entry, innovation by startups, and the ability of new firms to grow." 44% of small business owners report having been blocked from starting a new company because of a noncompete; 35% have been blocked from hiring the right person for a vacancy due to a noncompete. :
https://eig.org/noncompetes-research-brief/
As Gerstein writes, it's not unusual for the business lobby to lobby against things that are good for business – and lobby hard. The Chamber of Commerce has gone Hulk-mode on simple proposals to adapt workplaces for rising temperatures, acting as though permitting "rest, shade, water, and gradual acclimatization" on the jobsite will bring business to a halt. But actual businesses who've implemented these measures describe them as an easy lift that increases productivity.
The Chamber lobbies against things its members support – like paid sick days. The Chamber complains endlessly about the "patchwork" of state sick leave rules – but scuttles any attempt to harmonize these rules nationally, even though members who've implemented them call them "no big deal":
https://cepr.net/report/no-big-deal-the-impact-of-new-york-city-s-paid-sick-days-law-on-employers/
The Chamber's fight against American businesses is another one of those fracture lines in the conservative coalition. Working with far right dark money groups, they've worked in statehouses nationwide to roll back child labor laws:
https://www.epi.org/blog/florida-legislature-proposes-dangerous-roll-back-of-child-labor-protections-at-least-16-states-have-introduced-bills-putting-children-at-risk/
They also fight tooth-and-nail against minimum wage rises, despite 80% of their members supporting them:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/04/04/leaked-documents-show-strong-business-support-for-raising-the-minimum-wage/
The spectacle of Republicans in disarray is fascinating to watch and even a little exciting, giving me hope for real progressive gains. Of course, it would help if the Democratic coalition wasn't such a mess.
If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/14/when-youve-lost-the-fedsoc/#anti-buster-buster
Image:
Jason Auch, modified
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Antarctic_mountains,_pack_ice_and_ice_floes.jpg
CC BY 2.0
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So, since there seems to be a new flavour of infighting in the air, a little PSA:
If it looks like it was engineered to make you want to infight, that's because it fucking was. It's fucking bait.
If it's an anon claiming to be part of the community, I can guarantee: it's fucking bait.
If you're questioning whether something is bait or a genuinely infighty person, it's fucking bait.
If it makes you want to start a fratricide war inside the community that will make us all more vulnerable (yes, you too, because that's how civil wars work and have always worked historically), it's fucking bait.
.
For the love of everything that is good in this universe, don't fall for the fucking bait.
And even in the extremely fucking rare occasions where it's not bait (99.9% of the time because the person who's being an ass fell for bait themselves before posting whatever it is that they posted), don't bite.
Block.
You can block anons. You can block posts. You can block everything and everyone on this site.
The block button is right there begging to be used. Do it.
.
If we fight, we are more vulnerable.
Infighting is something outsiders cause to make us easier to stomp.
Infighting will literally Never lead to anything good or useful. Never. Not for you, not for the community, not for anyone but our common oppressors. Full fucking stop.
Don't. Start. Infighting.
.
I will not take part in this bullshit and I will avoid reblogging inflammatory shit, like I have been avoiding it before making this post.
I will not contribute to this mindless, self destructive endeavour.
Please use common sense and critical thinking, realise that functionally all infighting is caused by Bait coming from outside the community, and Just Don't.
.
This has been a PSA by: a tired queer who'd rather not have to make any more of these.
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The Feminists voted in another membership requirement that summer which sent shockwaves throughout the New York movement. Contending that the institution of marriage was "inherently inequitable" and that "the rejection of this institution both in theory and in practice [was] a primary mark of the radical feminist," they decreed that:
“no more than one-third of our membership can be participants in either a formal (with legal contract) or informal (e.g., living with a man) instance of the institution of marriage.”
Of all their many rules and requirements, the quota was surely the most controversial. It was widely condemned in other parts of the movement, and the group lost a number of its most vital members when Koedt, Karp, and Rainone—all of whom opposed the rule—decided to quit.
Most radical feminists felt that the quota wrongly attacked married women rather than the institution of marriage. However, one of the members who pushed for the quota denies that it in any way implied that married women were less trustworthy feminists. She claims that the quota was adopted to spare married members participating in the Marriage License Bureau demonstration from ridicule by the press. But if this were the case, why did the demonstrators refuse to reveal their marital status to those reporters who inquired? Indeed, others in the group dispute this explanation. For instance, Nanette Rainone contends:
“There were those who said that marriage was debilitating to women, therefore we couldn't have a lot of married women in our group because they would be damaged and would affect the thinking of the group. They felt that married women would cause the group to compromise.”
Kearon admits that the quota was "a bit of an embarrassment" for married members, but thinks that it was good to have "as few of those women" as possible who would go home to discuss the meetings with their husbands. She believes that those who supported the quota wanted the group to take more militant positions, which they felt married women might oppose. Mehrhof, who joined the group immediately following the group's marriage action in September, corroborates Kearon's view:
“In those days, which you have to remember were very, very different, we were incredible fanatics. It might be a terrible thing to say, but we just felt that some women were more prepared to move out than others. We had to take the responsibility of saying we can only have a certain percentage of women who are married and locked into men in the group.”
In their view, feminism was synonymous with separatism and marriage with collaboration. In fact, Kearon argued that “men are able to exert a powerful and constant pressure on their wives which can be dangerous to the movement.” At about the time the quota was established, Kearon wrote:
“In rejecting marriage we are setting up a standard for ourselves based on what we believe feminism must be in order to succeed. In rejecting marriage and fidelity to the male, we are cutting off our retreat from radical feminism and creating the necessity for female unity and trust.” [her emphasis]
But the policy engendered feelings of mistrust and betrayal, not the solidarity and trust they had hoped for. By the time Mehrhof became a member that fall, there were no longer any married women left in The Feminists. Redstockings member Irene Peslikis, who is married, briefly joined The Feminists in the spring of 1970 in part to challenge the quota. She recalls that "it was an incredibly humiliating experience to have people condescend to you." Peslikis found their condescension especially galling since “they didn't speak on national televison about their abortions,” as she courageously had following the Redstockings' abortion speak-out.
Atkinson's writings suggest that she may have had other things on her mind besides shielding the group's married members from criticism by the press. Atkinson, who referred to married women as "hostages," maintained that "the proof of class consciousness will be when we separate off from men." To Atkinson, marriage, or for that matter any relationship with a man, was perilous for women:
“The price of clinging to the enemy is your life. To enter into a relationship with a man who has divested himself as completely and publicly from the male role as possible would still be a risk. But to relate to a man who has done any less is suicide.”
But Atkinson appears to have been more concerned with the movement's image than with the welfare of those feminists who continued to “consort with the enemy.” Atkinson desperately wanted the movement to be taken seriously, to be regarded as revolutionary, yet she felt that "so far, the feminist movement has, primarily, been women coming together to complain." And in her view, radical feminists who continued to associate with men undermined the movement by making it appear ludicrous:
“The basic issue is consistency between belief and acts. Of course, you know that every woman in the movement is married to the single male feminist existing. That's why we're funny. Contradiction is the heart of comedy. A woman saying men are the enemy with a boy friend sitting next to her is both humiliating and tragic.”
Atkinson herself refused to appear with men in public when it might be construed that they were friends. She made an exception for any man who had "disassociated himself from the male role and from the male class as much as possible." Later, she reportedly refused to appear with any man in public except to engage in a “class confrontation.”
-Alice Echols, Daring to Be Bad: Radical Feminism in America: 1967-75
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