a thoughtful web.
Good ideas and conversation. No ads, no tracking.   Login or Take a Tour!
comment by am_Unition
am_Unition  ·  799 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Ottawa truckers' convoy galvanizes far-right worldwide

Supposing he was being genuine (big suppose), I agree with him on his economic framing. Front and foremost, this is class warfare. Globally, we have seen a pandemic exacerbate the already absurd wealth gap. The problem is that folks like Tucker Carlson, a millionaire at least a hundred times over, and so many others, like Pierre, here, have harnessed the lower socioeconomic classes' legitimate grievances to undermine trust in the very institutions that have been used historically to effect change; Unions, democratic majoritarian policy, and lately even science, statistics, and academic expertise.

That's why there is a sizeable kernel of truth to these concerns:

This is for posterity, because I know you know this. That "Don't Be a Sucker" production is a 75-year-old masterclass in the concept. Again, thanks for the recommend.

That said, I can't over-emphasize how relatively tame Pierre Poilievre seems to me vs. someone like Trump, who continues to this day to condone and even incite violence against his political enemies. Don't worry, we are exporting the extremism your way, and it's not unlikely that Pierre has something resembling a plan to leverage the importation for his own political advantage.

What's absolutely shite is that we clearly need to subvert the existing status quo, and at least one of the most popular movements has been lowkey appropriated by the billionaire class. And (you're not gonna believe this!) I don't think the billionaires want fuckall to meaningfully change. Instead, the wealthy actively work to cripple the ability of the proletariat to reverse wealth gap disparities. And stoking racism has proven to STILL be a very potent tool in their arsenal.

I'm by no means a hard-line Marxist! I think I'm an actual populist in the flavor of Bernie Sanders. A democratic socialist. So hopefully Erik Prince assassinates me in my sleep tonight.





user-inactivated  ·  799 days ago  ·  link  ·  
This comment has been deleted.