Continuing the discussion from What is neoliberalism?:
I was going to post in that thread, but didn’t really get around to it until I see WiseCrack’s Analysis on South Park’s latest season.
Are NeoLiberals abandoning pandering to conservatives and now shifting toward Progressives without actually ditching their philosophy? It’s a scary thought to know that Corporations are actually just trying to be inclusive without having to ditch their bottom line.
I think this is not new because — generalizing — unions didn’t maintain progressive unity after the civil rights movement. In 1968 and after, too many of union members voted for Nixon and then Reagan.
So . . . as strange as it seems, on the left, there was more support from corporations for cultural issues related to race and gender. I think that’s partly why HRC’s base includes so many corporations in addition to unions which are comparatively weak. Unions are too weak generally.
Even Sanders supporters often owe more to a corporate economic base than to unions. That makes no sense in terms of political power. The left has gotten a lot of political work done by organizing general strikes, secondary strikes and boycotts.
And that’s about to change.
What a weird headline. Shouldn’t it be, “Boycotting is a powerful activism tactic, so that’s why lawmakers are working against it” ?
The depends on whether you see the state as a liberal institution, a progressive institution, a conservative institution or something more peculiar. Ask yourself why “seditious libel” laws are, in general, pretty unpopular among legislators in this country,
I don’t think there’s a rendition of any conceivable SCOTUS that wouldn’t whack that down with a vengeance. If companies are people then boycotts are sure as hell speech.
It would be interesting to see how Clarence Thomas would rule. But I’m hopeful that such a law does not even pass the assembly.
Well, the side that hopes I die soon is boycotting Target … for not wanting me to die (topical too!). So it’s not like there aren’t plenty of people on both sides who would want to smoosh any such bills.
Or how about just: ‘Corrupt scum seek to destroy law so they can fortify nests’?
Oh hey welcome to the newly libera(L)ted Canada.
That was really good, BTW.
Do leftists have organize for strikes and boycotts to gather and align real political power? Or is voting enough? I think, all of the above.
From my perspective, those are two great things (um, slight exaggeration on national voting end since the larger the pool of voters the lower the impact of any one vote). But without community action, they’re very limited.
Not to drag anarchists into this conversation but they have effectively shown how much can be done for members of a community by members of a community. We’ve lost so many of our safety nets over the past 40 years. One of our biggest needs is community organizing.
But it needs to come from inside the communities or at the very least with a lot of humility and a focus on listening rather than assuming what is needed or what will work.
Activism in terms of advocacy is great … but it’s limited if so many voices suffering because of our current systems are effectively silenced by the situations our society has put them in.
Wow. I really, really agree with your post.
Demonstrating and direct action is something I tend to leave off my list. I honestly forget about it some of the time. It’s not that I haven’t participated in direct action. I have.
It’s your point that we communities need other help to sustain and reproduce their lives … even to identify as community members instead of consumers or transient, dissociated refugees of other places and groups.
And how? From day to day, what are practices which safely engage and sustain each other? For me, that’s a more fundamental question.
OTOH if laws are passed to prevent organized bullying of them as people, imagine the long tail on that one…
All these efforts to outlaw boycotting can only really outlaw calls for boycotts, i.e. speech.
Since no one can use the instance of one individual or group calling for a boycott to compel other individuals or groups to go against a boycott except by speech.
So what they’re crafting is a new SLAPP tool.
That’s bad, but every dog has it’s day, and most laws like this can be circumvented with specific language (like the UK media having stories about what they aren’t allowed to have stories about by way of not mentioning the actual subject and leaving much to the reader)
And I’ll be looking forward to the groups that use the same law to hit back at their corporate boycott targets, when one of these targets tries to interfere with the funding of a group or otherwise engages in free speech denigrating their ideological opponent by way of saying that no one should support them.
But maybe that’s the long game, because corporations do win in the land of no speech, they don’t need it, they’re fine if you don’t have it even if it means they must be silent too.
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