Mary Harrington Article on the Omnicause

[TempestTost]

https://unherd.com/2024/05/why-is-greta-wearing-a-keffiyeh/

I thought some might find this interesting. I know it's been mentioned here before that it sometimes seems like all "progressive" causes are all merging into one, and we've had discussions plenty of times about the way in which it seems like to be a good leftist you need to sign up for a whole list of right-think views.

MH has some ideas about the origins of this, or maybe the trajectory of it in the 20th century.

^When the current conflict in Gaza began, the climate activist group, Just Stop Oil, known for polarising, clickbait-friendly protests, such as blockading the M25 or throwing soup at Van Gogh paintings, promptly organised a sit-in at London’s Waterloo Station.
This sort of campaign creep is far wider than just climate and Palestine: all contemporary radical causes seem somehow to have been absorbed into one. A protean animating energy seems to ingest every progressive issue it encounters, to create a kind of ever-spreading, all-encompassing omnicause.^

I’ve been saying this for years.

When I went on the 2003 Stop the War March, it was full of Free Palestine and Fuck Fees placards.

The problem with the amorphous ‘left’ is that they conflate all the issues and it dilutes the message, in the end. And confuses the electorate.

Not to mention it means people accept dodgy ideas without examination because they think it's linked to something they believe in.

I don't imagine for one moment that St Greta thinks she's guilty of cultural appropriation . I do, though.

It pisses me off, because it can be very “not what I signed up for.” I joined an online climate group and was happily getting all their emails etc until they started including trans support sessions and articles on why trans rights were human rights and why climate justice meant inclusivity for LGBTQ people. That’s not what I joined for and I think on single issue campaigns it really muddies the waters. I left.

Yes, I think this is a problem for many groups. Amnesty International always comes to mind on this for me as it was one of the first examples I really noticed it happening very clearly.

For many years they did such important work focusing on political prisoners. Then they made the very controversial decision to include abortion rights - from a very western perspective of course - in their lobbying. (This was something their membership was very split on for a long time.) Of course this was hugely divisive, they lost many Catholic supporters, including some institutional support from Catholic groups. As well as lots of other individuals, who were nevertheless strong believers in the importance of preventing that kind of political suppression. that AI was founded to try and prevent.

They also directly compromised their position and voice in many countries where they worked. All of a sudden it wasn't just about political prisoners, where they clearly had the moral high ground compared to questionable state actors. They were trying to push ideas that many people in the population might not be happy with. So undermining their voice on their core issue.

It also potentially put them in a position of having to work on two issues that were opposed. They actually faced this recently when they were questioning supporting the freedom of speech of a political prisoner who had views that they considered bigoted. In the end, they rethought and supported asking for his release, but it was almost "political freedom for all as long as they are saying the right things which of course are the ones we think are right."
The fact that they could even consider something so fundamentally opposed to their own mission is crazy.

Amnesty sadly lost their way a while ago. A lot of their Russian campaigns were frankly bizarre. And this is a country with many actual things to get indignant about.

Surely the big appeal of single-issue politics is that it is a single issue. And that’s why they get engagement from people who aren’t engaged with party politics.

There’s an increasing feeling to me that there are “approved” and “unapproved” beliefs and an increasing inability to discern individual strands from the bunch and this article put it into words for me. Thanks for sharing.

This is something I've been aware of since way before the issues we discuss on this board.

I went to uni in the late 90s and joined People and Planet or whatever it was called. Went to several meetings and a couple of protests. One of them was an anti McDonalds one where some of us were sitting outside while others were chaining themselves to tables inside. I remember sitting cross-legged on the pavement outside, reading a copy of Socialist Worker that was being passed around and feeling so cool.~

After a few weeks I realised that everyone else was spending their weekends going on hunt sabs.
Now, you may agree with that or not, but I knew that I didn't feel able to dissent on that subject so drifted away from the group.
I felt that I wouldn't be able to put forward a different view on the subject so chose to leave the group (as a shy 18 yr old) rather than dissent.
I could completely see why people would want to sabotage hunts, but as a young person who came from a poor rural area where foxes are hunted for reasons of pest control and livelihood I felt completely torn and didn't see a way forward through discussion. (I can see both sides.)

(I also saw my Catholic grandparents, as lifelong socialists and charity fundraisers, distance themselves from Amnesty for the reasons mentioned previously in the thread.)

It's weird, I could see really clearly that there was a group-think going on, and that I didn't want to be part of it.

I don't know what made me wary of those 'approved beliefs' back when I was a student.

I'd like to think it was the beginning of my 'bullshit-o-meter', which I have been refining ever since.

I think the article isn't that plausible, or rather tries to construct something linked to historical strands.

I think it is probably more banal than that.

One is that many more young people go to universities, although in fact the majority of students are if not apolitical, not rabid. Other students are effectiely re-enacting the student life as novels and the main stream media have caricatured it.

The big difference is in fact how parents are now effectively acting as promoters of their children's radicalism. This is particularly true of the enviromental strand, Greta being a prime example where effectively her parents pimped her out, or at best thought to allow her to live her life as informed by her autism. The media just went wild. Their adoption of her then gave the false impression that is you protest you achieve change, not the reality that you are just fodder for the every hungry sensational valure free media. Packham is another example of this. ie the roman circus approach to politics. What the media is really hoping is that some cult figure will just go to far.

But this single minded loud proclamation of their virtue and that the media puts it on their front pages means young people aspire to be that front page. ie they are more motivated by a facile headline than actual change.

As opposed to lets say grungy hippies who went off to Wales to life off the country side but in fact through finding how hard that was actual developed various appliances etc., that are environmentally friendly. And are now ironically sucessful businesses.

The protesting is seen to be the end in itself. You are the hero/ine. In my borough the local pro Palestinian groups organised a cycle ride round the area and later published photos about how wonderful it had been, and many of them had cried.

I know may activists, some of whom I dont agree with, from cyclists, to environmentalists, to Pro Palestinian groups who are just embarrassed by what many campaigns have become.

But many parents of these primarily university educated over indulged offspring, just coo and take virtual friendly photos to share.

So not unlike the trans woo woo, where apparently parents bow down to the wisdom of 10 year olds, we now have desparately to please parents being the cheerleaders of what is little more than fashion trend that young people are desparate to be seen to be part off, in much the same way as they want to have been and seen to have been at various music festivals.

This fawning on the supposed wisdom of young people by parents seems to have now seeped into the attitude of grandparents. I laughed outloud when I heard this story. I bet these 2 women thought their grand children would think they are wonderful. https://www.lbc.co.uk/news/two-women-charged-criminal-damage-magna-carta-glass-smashed-just-stop-oil/

Its like being on facebook or X or instagram. its not the message but the number of likes, shares you get.

No need to bother with the boring, time consuming work of actually trying to work out new systems, ways of working, consumerism, political practice. Just through some process of osmosis revolutionary change will happen and you will get a millions shares on the internet.

How.bored the.policemen look!

Camus (and probably others) wrote about the main problem being utopianism - I think that's definitely part of it. E.g. its not enough to say "we want to stop X thing and then X thing won't be a problem anymore but many things in the world will still be shit". You have to believe that your cause is part of a movement to build basically a perfect world. So campaigning to reform prisons aren't enough. We have to abolish all the prisons and then social divisions will disappear. It isn't enough to criticise police corruption/misogyny/racism where it exists. Or to push for better social care/prevention. We have to get rid of the police entirely and then there will be no crime because all crime is caused by social deprivation and we will have solved that which is also why we won't need prisons. If you disagree clearly you don't want to live in that perfect world. The arc of history bends towards justice people. That's why from the river to the sea Palestinians will never be free until trans healthcare is available to all etc etc (actual slogan I saw)

I do think there is a bit of the same thing going on from the other side almost as a reaction. E.g. dismissing climate change because many of the people protesting loudly about climate change are idiots. Or basically calling everything "woke".

Yes!

Polarization is leading to exactly the same nonsense from both "sides."

I'm sorry to have to say that I've seen the same kind of thing among one or two people I know who've woken up to the trans activism bollocks. Not most of them, but one or two. They started off by saying some sensible stuff on TRA, and then COVID sent them off down a conspiracy theory rabbit hole about everything from vaccines to climate change to low-traffic neighborhoods.

Interesting but I don't think it's anything new. I remember protesting against poll tax yonks ago and socialist worker party was handing out placards and banners for various other causes I had no idea about.

It goes back to the idea that all "oppressions" are inter-linked, which itself maybe has its roots in the new socialism of the 1960's - with its emphasis on Internationalism/International Socialism - and which is why perennial protestors like Jeremy Corbyn focus as much, if not more, on what is going on in the Middle East and Central America than they do on everyday bread and butter issues at home.

At the heart of it is an anti westernism, anti americanism - and we see these movements now aligning themselves with any group or nation which can be seen to be oppressed by western global capitalism - which makes for some strange bedfellows.

Anti Western powers must love it - to see a society collapsing in on itself.

There’s an increasing feeling to me that there are “approved” and “unapproved” beliefs and an increasing inability to discern individual strands from the bunch

Yes. Me too.
I have found it can create a constant, low-level dis-ease and unhealthy self-censoring in social situations. This is not good for society.

I like how you've put it very simply here, MrsBobton

Polarisation and tribalism.

Yes, it is almost religious in motivation. The search for heaven, nirvana, the perfect world in which everyone will be free of all pain, suffering and struggle. Karl Marx disavowed religion, but created another one.

This type thing makes me sad about the greens. If there was ever going to be a moment in time which was theirs, surely it is now. They had one job. And look where they are... batshit crazy and nothing to do with the climate! All because they moved away from the 1 cause.

Which are amplified, of course, by social media - which seems to be where most people now get their news and information. I suspect that social media and the manipulation of the information and news within, by different groups and power alignments it is going to become an even bigger, more pressing issue than it already is.

The Greens seem to be a victim of their own success. Once they became a political movement rather than a campaign group, then they had to have positions on matters other than environment if they were to represent their constituents.

I don’t know the history of the party, but I would have thought the ethical approach would be to consider each matter through the lens of their core values. Ie, what is the most environmentally friendly approach to healthcare, defence, education, housing, transport, energy. Some of those would be easy to figure out, some not. But it would have been worthwhile to come up with something genuinely new and innovative. After all, the first Labour government achieved some genuinely new and innovative reforms in society - is difficulty for us to appreciate for example what a difference the NHS made to society. Particularly for women’s health. Doctors were shocked that so many women were living with severe prolapses because they didn’t have the money to go to see a doctor, any money for the doc was for kids or men as the main wage earner. And they thought that having your womb fall out was just one of the things that happened to women as they got older, like “the change”. Not something to bother the docs about. But they started to come forward after 1948 and once the scale of the problem became apparent, women’s health started to become more important in the nhs.

I remember protesting against poll tax yonks ago and socialist worker party was handing out placards and banners for various other causes I had no idea about.

I think one of the problems is that many genuine causes / campaigns are started by people who on one level are apolitical but feel strongly about an issue, eg poll tax.

But there are certain parts of the left (particularly the SWP) who see just about any campaign as one they can parachute into, and through existing connections take over the running of the campaign. And their priority is the political analysis is that all evils come from western capitalism, past colonialism etc..

Then the original campaign is then promoted as being part of their over arching political analysis.

I am never sure why they do this. Nine times out of ten, the coopted campaigns are never sucessful, because the public is alienated by the sloganeering, and those who were committed to tackling an issue are left feeling "politics" doesn't work.

So marches become a cliche. Too many pre-prepared banners (which are basicallly just to advertise the SWP) and then the other regular group - the Black Block - who are youngish men who think clambering up statues, spray painting etc., is the height of revolutionary action. Nearly always upper class white males.

But again the media makes out this is what marches are, the lunatic fringe.

But equally marches dont get media coverage unless there is a drama.

How many was it who marched against Blair cosying up to the USA? Certainly one of the biggest number of people out on the street (apart from VE Day). But it made no difference to the politicians.

So I dont think what is currently happening is that different than has been happening for more than a few decades. (Probably CND was one of the last independent campaign, but I think later infiltrated).

Its just that media coverage, and particularly the tiktok / instagram campaign make it appear to be bigger than it actually is.

And all those young people thinking they are part of making change will in a few years be sitting back saying, it make no difference, politicians dont listen to us, why bother.

But never question whether they failed to understand at the time because they liked using certain social media platforms they just presume everyone else does.

It reminds me of this song from way back:

Hmm. Thinking about climate change being linked to other social justice issues, I would say the approach at other end of the spectrum - by which I mean treating global warming as a stand alone issue that just needs technical solutions - doesn’t work either, and can also be described as naive.
For decades there has been strong evidence of the inevitable consequences of ramping up fossil fuel burning. Why we are where we are now involves capitalism - its inherent drive to increase consumption and maximise profits, including a massive propaganda campaign of disinformation to throw doubt on climate science. It involves power and geopolitics - the countries set to flood/starve etc first are mostly the poorest countries with less power and influence. And then that links back to colonialism…
So while some of the links are a bit bonkers (‘no climate justice without trans health care’ or whatever) others are completely logical. Where I think the problem is, is that a lot of people don’t give a shit about global injustice, so when climate change is framed in that way it turns them off. So then it seems more of a niche issue for lefties like me and radical students, whereas I believe there’s actually quite a broad support base for keeping a habitable planet. Or at least I hope there is.

In some ways, these po-faced destruction attempts on cultural treasures by activists remind me of the Taliban/ISIS blowing up ancient ruins and art in areas where they take over and on a smaller scale it’s like local councils tying up children’s swings so they can’t be used on a Sunday.

It’s all Puritanism of the type that believes no-one should be happy or joyful if they don’t subscribe to the 'one-true correct philosophy' and of the type that wants to force that philosophy on others.

I think that's true. There's a difference though. Its one thing to be drawing links between climate change and the exploitation of third world countries, or drawing links between climate change and (e.g.) the profits at all cost model of capitalism. Its another thing to be saying that anti-colonialism IS the answer to climate change. Or "When we switch to the communist utopia climate change will no longer be a problem." Within the first model I could argue that capitalism is causing climate change and someone else could argue back that it isn't and someone else could suggest a different solution than global Marxism. Within the second all problems are interlinked - you can't go against the central thesis and there's also an assumption that solving Y will have a positive effect on X (when often problems are way more complicated and interact in contradictory ways). Discussing pros and cons, and nuance isn't possible.
It looks like joined up thinking at first glance but it isn't.