Exh neoslibspon

 From Jacobin article with Dr Cornel West which I agree with

DANIEL DENVIR

I was recently talking to Wendy Brown about just that, and about how neoliberalism and empire has really remade human subjectivities. And something that we don’t talk about enough when discussing the roots of Trumpism is nihilism. We’re talking about fundamental ways of being in and relating to the world that have been profoundly deformed. But the flip side of that is this newly resurgent left, which emerged, I think, in large part from the contradictions between Obama’s promise and the dismal reality of his governance.

What do you make of this long-standing bipartisan consensus around the American idea? Fracturing into so many pieces, both the nihilism on the Right, and the resurgent socialism on the Left.

And yet, somehow, Biden, this human embodiment of a senescent liberal establishment politics, has emerged as the president to preside over what comes next?

CORNEL WEST

Well, I mean, I’m glad you raised that issue of nihilism. I’ve been wrestling with this throughout my own work — the nihilism in black America race matters. Nihilism manifests in the three fundamental tendencies of militarism, of authoritarianism, and of free market fundamentalism. In 2004, I was already arguing that these are the dominant forces that are being pushed on us. But nihilism is not just on the Right. It’s among the neoliberals as well.

DANIEL DENVIR

And it’s among the ordinary liberal voters who say, I agree with all of Bernie’s policies, but it’s just not possible.

CORNEL WEST

Well, I wouldn’t call that a nihilism, though. I would call that . . .

DANIEL DENVIR

More of a pessimism?

CORNEL WEST

Yeah, that’s more of a pessimism, or a misplaced kind of realism, which takes the form of a narrow kind of opportunism. People these days call it pragmatism, but it ain’t got nothing to do with William James.

Charles Sanders Peirce’s pragmatism was always visionary. It comes out of [Ralph Waldo] Emerson. Emerson is visionary. But practicality, or opportunism, or careerism, is market driven. So anytime you see the journalist — the mainstream journalists calling for pragmatism — they just telling them, “Let’s be opportunistic.”

And usually, this allows them to pursue their careers and remain well adjusted to a status quo that they refuse to submit to serious critique. But it’s true that the nihilism at the deeper level simply says that, in the end, might really does make right. That, in the end, any talk about integrity, honesty, decency, morality, or spiritual vision that authorize an alternative to the present are childish. Now, that’s where your analysis and what I’m talking about really feed together in a beautiful way. You see?

What they’re saying is, any of us who provide some alternative are naive, need to grow up, are utopian.

Because what they’re saying is, any of us who provide some alternative are naive, need to grow up, are utopian. You know, as if the slave on the plantation, who has a dream of overthrowing slavery, somehow needs to grow up. No, no, no, no, he’s got a very serious dream that’s rooted in his material condition. He just doesn’t have the collective wherewithal right now to act on it. And that’s how human history proceeds, forward and backward.

What kinds of dreams? What kinds of alternatives? Fascism is an alternative, because there are fascist zones in the history of the United States with slavery, and Jim Crow, and Jane Crow. But fascism taking over the whole nation, taking over the whole empire, that affects everybody on vanilla sides as well as chocolate sides. That would have been new. And a lot of people have been debating about this in terms of, “well, we got fascism in America from the very beginning.” Fascist zones, absolutely. There’s no doubt about that. You can’t talk about the history of black people without talking about fascist zones in the imperial democracy, in the white supremacist democracy.

But Democratic practices and rights and liberties, even when they apply to a small group, are still precious. It’s just that — at that particular moment in history — it’s predicated on the domination of others. It’s predicated on the subjugation of others. But the rights and the liberties themselves, we want that for everybody. And the same would be true in terms of a certain level of prosperity. We want everybody to eat, we want everybody to have food, we want everybody to have a decent house.

Everybody should have a quality education, everybody should be able to raise their voices without thinking that the police is going to snatch them off the street and so forth and so on, you see. This is where the Bill of Rights becomes very important, even though early on, it was applied only to a small group. And we have to say that over and over again, to make sure that we provide clarity, intellectual clarity, moral clarity, in what we’re willing to live and die for. Let’s be very honest about that.

And this is where the arts come in, brother. That we’re at a moment now, where people will more and more look to artists to provide a certain kind of wind at the back for those trying to provide alternatives to the neoliberal status quo. Which seems to be, now, coming back in place, if Biden in fact ends up winning.

We’re talking at a time where it’s still up in the air, but it looks like it’s moving in that direction. It’s still very grim, even if he does win, because of the same structures of domination — the same blindness, the same refusals to engage poverty, to take seriously what the working class in all of its various expressions and colorations is going through. And to what’s going on around the world. AFRICOM (United States Africa Command) in Africa is expanding. We’re going to get United States support for the occupation in West Bank, in Gaza, and so forth. Biden and Benjamin Netanyahu will still have a very strong alliance. May not be as cozy as with Trump, but it will still be an alliance.

We have to take a stand in that regard. We’re going to have to be honest about the plight of Jews in Russia and in France, and in Pittsburgh, in terms of escalating hatred of Jews. We’ve got to be able to have a solidarity again — a politics of genuine solidarity that’s rooted in vision and analysis of radical Democratic possibility. And that’s what I love about Sister Wendy’s work. She and Judith [Butler], I mean, they’ve got to be two of the greatest intellectuals in one household that we have in the country, I’ll tell you that right now. And that’s a beautiful thing, that’s a beautiful thing.