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The return of identity v. class discourse circa 2018 tipped us off, cuz as old heads, we'd already had those convos years before. Part of what muddied the discourse was that the term "identity politics" means something completely different in the street activist scene.
Usually, its associated with liberal peace police, counter-insurgent pacification & NGO leaders steering pple twrd elections. This structure's maintained by false dichotomies btwn good protester & bad protestor, deference to a nebulous "black leadership class", & tokenism as
recuperation. Basically, it was a wing of Dem-aligned forces that historically overlapped with the streets that operated a specific pacification model. Their role was to jump into uprisings, hijack complex analyses around struggles & distort them toward reactionary ends under a
reformist garb. Such phenomenon was explored in Accomplices Not Allies as well as Cindy Milstein's Taking Sides.
- http://www.indigenousaction.org/accomplices-not-allies-abolishing-the-ally-industrial-complex/
- https://www.akpress.org/takingsides.html
- http://www.indigenousaction.org/accomplices-not-allies-abolishing-the-ally-industrial-complex/
- https://www.akpress.org/takingsides.html
It was even the og definition libcom used in this respone to the return of the discourse. This is what tripped the 'wait a min' sensors. These new people were talking about "anti-idpol" like it was in opposition to idpol obsessed left that didn't exist https://libcom.org/blog/identity-crisis-leftist-anti-wokeness-bullshit-22082017
Cuz such things were associated with liberals & the "peaceful protest" side of these movements. Not leftists. There's been plenty of discussion around things like intersectionality, academia, & "shit gettin too abstract" in the scene but this new discourse was starkly different
These new "anti-idpol" crusaders had constructed an entire camp & identity around being opposed to this nebulous force. And the factions of the mvmnt they described as representing this were the ultraleft parts, i.e the ones who first wrote the critiques of tokenism in the scene.
Furthermore, their political solutions were motivated by incredibly reformist & pacifist tactics such as electoralism. And extreme adherence to such that they viewed anything beyond election work or M4A as a "deviance" or a "wrecker plot."
They took what was ostensibly an anarchist critique of liberalism, flipped it and applied to those very same anarchists. And you can trace this all the way back to early formations of the New DSA in the mid 2010s. Esp, post-bump the plan became quite apparent.
So the driving recruitment force behind the DSA surge was Left Caucus, which was a big tent of street left doing entryism but in reality was a started & steered by Jacobin Reading Groups. The rise of the left in the mid 2010s got many OWS & BLM era folks to surge into the caucus
This made it rather uncontrollable & in mid 2017, it split. The Jacobin faction went on to form Momentum & the rest is known. But essentially, momentum was formed in reaction to the influence of the LSC as well as certain communist strains in their caucus.
Can be traced right to back to the Fetonte scandal. It was quite clear these people were driven by a different set of politics than the old street rebel crews or the stuffy liberal guard. They were academic Marxists, essentially. Movement managers who'd never been in a movement.
Their were response to inclusion of the street left was pretty much "shut up, follow our lead." No interest in actually building coalitions or strategies or even projects, just creating a campaign vehicle in which they could launch political and media career.
I'm saying the B&R Jacobin faction were the PMCs. Yet somehow this went unnoticed & instead that label got applied to the LSC & Momentum's dissidents. Now, where does the Dirtbag stuff come in?
So after Charlottesville, Julius Krein distanced himself from the alt-right & denounced Trump. He believed the general Greenwaldian deep state narrative obstructing the Trump admin but ultimately saw the MAGA project as a failure unless it could merge with other populist forces.
Essentially he spent the past few years cultivating relationships with people associated with Zero Books, Greenwald & what would eventually become the Pop Left. Angela Nagle is perhaps the most infamous example. Released in March 2017, Kill All Normies became an immediate
top read among people interested in understanding the far right. However, it was framed in a way that blamed the internet, specifically vulnerable trans teens, for creating the reaction. A strange take but it seemingly fit in with the other narratives a la Taking Sides.
From there she built a following & then aligned perfectly with Krein's quest thus building a propaganda line from American Affairs into leftwing discourse. And like the confused Harvard-brained fuck he is, Krein's takes on identity politics were a hodge podge of bullshit from
different often competing sources. It wasn't based on the internal left critiques of before but rather mimicked that classic RW flattening of liberal & leftist. The enemy were declared "wokescold wreckers": simultaneously weak snowflakes & dangerous agents of destruction.
Other people join this scam. Michael Tracey was probably recruited thru Nagle but his trajectory is complete at this point. Amber Frost was another one, and with her, Krein now had influence over the Brooklyn Podcast circuit.
Ever noticed how circa 2017 & 2018, Nagle, Zero Books, Rania Khalek, Taibbi, Jimmy Dore, all these fucks were promoted & shuffled around from platform to platform. We were being told "these are your lefty voices." This was the podcast circuit, look back at the episode archives.
So, the key here was that Krein didn't need to "get got" everyone but he "got got" exactly the right people he needed to. From there, the cesspool started spawning frankensteins: enter Red Scare, TruAnon, DPS, Aimee, & the whole "post-left" super edgelord faction of the Dirtbags.
As far as how the DL & Momentum linked up: Bhaskar wanted to seem cool and Amber was *fucking cool* compared to his project. So they teamed up. It happened that the reactionary elements of the Krein-influenced Dirtbags lined up perfectly with Jacobin's anti-anarchist politics.
That covers that aspect. There's much, MUCH more to the story which includes Peter Theil, Curtis Yarvin & the techie fash. And we haven't talked about Grayzone fitting into this which is a separate, but related, angle. Threads for another time.
Forgot to mention that thru Tracey, Krein influenced Greenwald & his lackeys Lee Fang & Zaid Jilani. Yeah that explains all that. Next time I do this I'll mention how the other factions played into this.
