Red I think that article touches on what I hate so much about all those Momentum-y "I would rather Leave with Corbyn than Remain with anyone else"-style tweets.
For me, it feels as though the "Communitarian/Cosmopolitan" style political alignment is not just a way of affiliating politically that is held by a particular group (Metropolitans; young people) but an actual direction of travel, a progressive direction of travel. It's based on an awareness - perhaps not even articulated - that the old political discourses, based on relationship to production and capital - were inadequate and had an unnuanced understanding of power relations. They didn't take into account the specific power relations inhering in, for example, being female, gay, disabled, an immigrant, a person of colour, a religious or racial minority, etc.
Generally, I guess I have a notion of political development ( - that political discourse changes -) which is fairly optimistic (- history happens, the stuff we learn gives us insights which can't be undone, short of huge repression). So, given that there have been huge social movements around feminism, anti-racism, gay rights, etc., we now have a political discourse - an political system - which, generally, can be called upon to take the political reality of these subjects on board.
So, when I see those tweets, I experience them as incredibly reactionary.
It feels as though I am being asked to ignore everything I feel I know about politics and go back to an old-skool, 'right-left' system, where the most fundamentally 'real' political subjects are based on their relationship to production. And that tends to be the white, male worker as a default. I say that because the 'reality' of any other political subjectivity - your identity as a woman, your identity as a gay person, etc. - has lesser political reality in that political philosophy.
I feel that the old 'right-left' system is no longer fit for purpose. It needs radical overhaul, not simply tinkering round the edges, or superficial widening to accommodate more 'shades' of the 'political worker subject'.
I feel I'm being told that I have to put up and shut up.
To me, it feels like a massive step backwards.
It doesn't help that those tweets are addressed to Lefties - that "Open-Closed" characterisation is dismissed and demonised as being "Blairite", "New Left".
I experience it as an attempt to try and brainwash me into thinking that what I experience as a progressive thrust in political discourse is, in fact, reactionary, a thing of the past, a hangover of "New Labour". The future lies with a return to the core principles of Marxism.
It really makes my head explode. We've just had a referendum, the outcome of which will impact on the coming generation with a far greater effect than any other political decision I can think of in my lifetime. I feel it can only be understood, and then dealt with, by using the tools of "Communitarian/Cosmopolitan" thinking - at least as a starting point.
It feels as though I'm being asked to believe black is white, rain isn't wet, and my own experience is a fantasy.
It feels deeply, profoundly reactionary - and slightly like brainwashing/gaslighting.
It also makes me think that there is a real split between the Momentum grassroots (which seems to me to be a Mouffe-Laclau oppositional, strategic, hegemony - and actually contains an awful lot of those 'new' political subjects, whose interests are absolutely not merely economic) and it's leadership (who I suspect are quite old-skool, Hard Lefties, who really do think that things like 'feminism' are a 'distraction from the real struggle', however much lip-service they pay to these subjects). I suspect there is going to be a political implosion there at some point.