Though Cowards Flinch

He won’t tell me any details, but apparently Paul – yes, you know him, the one who writes on this blog – spoke to none other than Phillip Blond at the Labour Party conference, supposedly – and among other things – about me and my utilisation of the term “epistemic closure” to designate a good portion of the electorate who support the Conservative Party, despite being theoretically very removed from actual conservatism.

Paul has written some blog posts opposing my use of this term, so I can only imagine it was a critical conversation, but at least I got those two fogey’s talking.

Not one to blow my own, it turns out I’m not alone in thinking there is some parity in the Conservative Party and those for whom the charge “epistemically closed” had originally been levelled at by Julian Sanchez – those dreaded Tea Party folk in the US.

Four days ago, Patrick J. Buchanan of The American Conservative magazine – yes my favourite too – labelled Cameron the ‘Tea Party Tory’. (h/t Freddy Gray of the Speccie).

In fact, he goes further than I do. In my writings, I said Cameron is probably a limp-wristed leftie Tory who is able to sleep at night under the pretence he cares for the poor, but in order to be electable in his party, needs to appeal to a certain section of the party, what I call the epistemically closed section.

Buchanan, in fact, says that Cameron’s party’s cuts reflect exactly the ethos of the tea party – small government at a drastic scale.

No doubt as the money talks, Cameron’s soft social Toryism will be piss in the wind compared to the damage wielded by his cust agenda. Perhaps I didn’t go far enough in calling Cameron out for the epistemic closure inside his party.

Background articles:

The epistemic closure of the Conservative Party

Cameron will fail in reviving Conservatism

David Cameron and the Conservative identity crisis

Recently Paul (Mr Cotterill to you), in the comments thread to a post of mine on conservatism and epistemic closure, said that I’d probably at some stage detail some of my thoughts on the tea party movement. That’s what I am going to do now, albeit exploring another narrative simultaneously; that of black conservatism.

Unsurprisingly, some of the sentiments and placards that stand out from the tea party movement concern Obama’s race, nationality, religious background and myths about socialistic politics – all very low politics.

Some of the intellectual backbone of the movement is provided by such media personalities as Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh – who the charge “epistemic closure” had originally been levelled at by Julian Sanchez. It remains almost impossible to separate the politics of conservative epistemic closure from the tea party movement therefore.

Another thing that springs to mind is Pastor Jones and the Koran burning, and the protests over Ground Zero Mosque, which drew support from that most disturbing blogger and tea partier Pamela Geller of Atlas Shrugs.

There are 61 posts on the above blog which are categorised as Obama’s Birth Certificate Forgery – which should tell you something about the content which appears there. Indeed, the tea party has become inseparable from ad hominem attack of Obama’s nationality, evoking criticisms that at the heart of the movement is racism. Further still, reports have emerged that the English Defence League are forging links with the tea party movement, which will add much fuel to the fire of such criticisms.

But it is of little surprise to me that certain black commentators have come out to deny the movement as ultimately a racist one. The Telegraph had an article on Saturday profiling Tom Scott – who will be the first black Republican congressman from the deep south in more than a century. In it, they quote him as saying, of the tea party movement, “this whole race issue is a diversion away from the real basic platform of the Tea Party”.

The Guardian has started to host a blog by a man called Lloyd Marcus, who is referred to on his homepage as a “Tea Party singer/songwriter, entertainer and speaker” as well as being a “black conservative”.

In a blog entry published last Friday entitled “Why I am a black tea party patriot opposed to Barack Obama” – a really terrible piece – he ends by saying:

…when I hear politicians, such as Barack Obama, pandering to the so-called poor of America, it turns my stomach. I’ve witnessed the deterioration of the human spirit, wasted lives and suffering that happens when government becomes “daddy”.

What is common to both commentators, and common to what Tom Scott called “the real basic platform of the Tea Party” is a dissatisfaction of high taxes and big state. Some of the patent crap about Obamacare having a death panel, uttered in lieu of research by Sarah Palin, was piss in the wind, but the movements’ opposition to universal healthcare was predicated on the idea that universal care is somehow un-American and at odds with the principle of low spending and less government.

In fact listening to some of the members of the movement who are dubious even of the Republican’s spending, views of whom Ed Pilkinton of the Guardian recently had the privilege of interacting with (see video here), one gets the sense that at heart of the movement is a kind of socially conservative, economically fiscal conservative/libertarianism exploiting a low politics platform to reach the hearts and minds of Obama-sceptics.

Therefore I should just clarify, that simply because the movement has black members, this in itself does not prove critics wrong about race – I’m not that stupid – but that there is a little more to the tea party than that – and in fact it hasn’t phased me at all that the movement appeals to black people.

In fact, it rather reminds me of an analysis of black conservatism by the US philosopher and academic Cornel West – whose voice rose once again in light of Obama’s presidency, after saying he wanted him to be a “progressive Lincoln” so that West can be the “Frederick Douglass to put pressure on him.”

It was the opinion of West, in his 1994 book Race Matters, that black conservatism gained much traction, among other things, as a response to a crisis in black liberalism. Black conservatives, for West, seemed inclined to support freedom movements abroad – Europe, Latin America, East Asia – but were disinclined to support the freedom movement in America.

Black conservatives according to West were rather scornful of affirmative action measures, but it is his contention that the well-heeled, middle class black American conservatives were actually biting the hand which fed them. 40 years ago, he stated, 50% of black teenagers in the US had agricultural jobs, 70% of those lived in the South, many jobs disappeared due to measures curbing industrialisation, and in 1980 15% of all black men reported no yearly earnings at all to the Census Bureau while the US army at the time was almost a third black.

In the same breath as questioning why black conservatives couldn’t see the obvious racial disparity in equality of opportunity, West also pours scorn on black liberalism limiting itself to in-fighting and petite squabbling, taking its eye off of the real crisis.

West contends that many viewed black liberalism as inadequate and black conservativism unacceptable, that is until black conservatism began to appeal to a classical liberalism in what West defines as a “post-liberal society and post-modern culture”.

Such a move is not alien to us in the UK; indeed listen to any Tory cabinet minister admit at the moment how the Conservatives are more radically liberal and supportive of the poor than Labour were.

The parallels in what West is saying and the sentiments of contemporary black conservatives and members of the tea party are that not only does Obama purposefully play down his white heritage, but that he is setting back the plight of blacks in society because of it; he represents a failure in black liberal leadership (or, in the words of Timothy Johnson, co-founder of the Frederick Douglass Foundation, a group that helps promote black Republican candidates, “His mother was white, his father was a person of colour but every time there’s a racial issue he plays the race card just the same as everyone else.”)

I don’t share this sentiment, but all it takes is the perception that Obama is setting black politics back, and thus arises the crisis of black leadership similar to one diagnosed by Cornel West.

In conclusion to this blog entry, which admittedly took many deviations, I will say that the tea party is marred by a pretty low level of epistemically closed politics, but that stripped down it is a PR-savvy version of the Taxpayers’ Alliance. In the process of its becoming in US politics, it will be a haven for many black people who feel, as Timothy Johnson does, that Obama is doing a disservice to black politics; this may well see a resurgence of black conservatism similar to that assessed by Cornel West – and through the same conditions too. It is incumbent upon Obama to take heed of this possibility, and counter the tactics of the tea party, not because it is racist, but precisely because it is opening itself to Obamasceptics of all stripes.

Reading the Economist this week, I noted an article which might provide the opening lines to the epitaph of Sunny Hundal’s idea (responded to by myself and Madam Miaow) that the right-wing Tea Party movement are somehow more successful at taking control of the Republican Party than their leftie counterparts.

The usual ideas (clichés?) are floated by Sunny – we socialists are all too busy fighting amongst ourselves etc, they’re more pragmatic while we’re more idealistic etc – but in actual fact, the seeming drift of the Republicans towards the Tea Party movement doesn’t change the nature of the Republican Party at all. Fiery rhetoric about slashing state powers on the ground, continuing corporate welfare when not stumping.

The Economist mentions the primary race for Georgia, in which all the candidates addressed the local Tea Party group and did a grip’n'grin. Candidates thought to be ‘establishment’ candidates – like Oxendine and Deal – lost out to Handel, who in her leaflets denounced her opponents, dubbed “the good ole boys” as “politics as usual”. Handel was also recognised to be more popular at the local Tea Party convention. So far, so good for the Tea Party movement, right?

Well, we’ll see. Ms Handel was endorsed by Sarah Palin, darling of the Republican grassroots, and surged ahead in polling shortly thereafter. Palin is the darling of the Republican grassroots and the Tea Party movement; her endorsements carry a huge amount of weight (or at least press coverage, which can amount to the same thing in races loaded up on TV spots) and she doesn’t wield them against Tea Party people – such as her decision not to endorse Jane Norton over Ken Buck in Colorado.

But who is she endorsing? In Handel’s case, whatever the candidate says about “the good ole boys” and ending “politics as usual”, she’s no outsider. One time President and CEO and a county Chamber of Commerce, having worked as an executive for companies like KPMG, she was appointed Chief of Staff for a previous Georgia governor, and from 2007 until 2010 she served as Secretary of State in Georgia. This is a full-time careerist politico, who, incidentally, has received numerous endorsements from the rest of the Republican establishment.

So what effect, really, is the Tea Party movement having on Republican politics? It would be easy to portray the Deal v. Handel run-off in August as establishment v. Tea Party-backed outsider, as the Economist does, but it would also be lazy. They are both political insiders, and actually, so the commentary from local sources seem to suggest, Handel is probably more liberal than Deal, but she has endorsements from well-known conservative figures to bolster her reputation.

My point in all this is to suggest that the Republican grassroots are being diddled in exactly the same way as Leftie grassroots activists. As has been noted with regard to the Labour leadership election, since the stinging criticisms a couple of months ago that most of the candidates fudged the question of gay marriage, more candidates have come out to back it – as it’s likely to be a popular position with a large section of Labour’s base (though very unpopular with another section).

It’s a sop – it won’t change anything fundamental about Labour’s approach, but it allows the candidates to appeal for grassroots support. The Tea Party movement is being used in the same way. At the bottom are people with a some genuine grievances – the belief that immigration results in worse employment conditions, or the wish that NAFTA should be scrapped, for example. Yet Republicans aren’t going to curb immigration, and they won’t scrap NAFTA. It’ll hurt economic growth.

Meanwhile, far from being grassroots-run, the Tea Party movement is basically a network of professional pressure groups which can link national political figures and large emailing lists, and which can fill stadiums with people who believe that these groups are the last-ditch American defence against socialism. The sort of hyperbole common to true believers here would be hilarious if it wasn’t so dangerous – but the candidates they’re backing don’t share any of these beliefs. People who have served in state and national politics aren’t that naive. They are using the grassroots, and will then promote their own agenda once in office.

The odd sop will be thrown to the base, of course – that’s just good politics. But the disconnection between Right grassroots and leadership, and Left grassroots and leadership is exactly the same.

It should be a lesson that, after eight years of a Republican President, the grassroots of the Right – the sort who idealised things like the 9/12 campaign – were disillusioned and pissed off. Two years in to a Democratic Presidency and Congress which promised much and delivered little, the implication of Sunny’s remarks (though he might not see it like this) are that Democratic supporters expected too much – that blame should lie with the grassroots, rather than with tenacious corporate lobbying, a massively funded propaganda campaign, or with obfuscating Senators.

The grassroots American left has every right to be pissed off. They were taken advantage of – and the Republican grassroots will likely be in the same position once Obama can no longer be the whipping boy for every frothing congressional wannabe.

In the UK, we should learn this lesson. Whoever wins the leadership election now – John McDonnell having failed to make the ballot – the result is going to be a disconnection between what the activists of the party want and what the PLP and the trades union bureaucracies settled for. That’s not the fault of demanding activists – as in America, it is the fault of the process underpinning Labour Party politics.

Sunny tweeted an article at me this morning (the blog-equivalent of being flipped the bird?) entitled “The problem with the Left and their political parties“. It makes a variety of assertions – that the Left blame of leaders is leading to despair, that the Right is more pragmatic and inclined to think strategically than the Left. There’s an assertion that really the Left can’t fix that much, so why bother trying?

The conclusion of the article is that Lefties are too focused / aren’t focused enough on parliament, and that we’re all infighting-happy. Truthfully, if the people’s front of Judea had been mentioned, I think we’d be on track for highest number of clichés in the one article. So allow me to make the case for the defence.

First contention; the Right are not more pragmatic nor inclined to think strategically. A whole host of elections in 2008 were won by the Democrats in the USA (and the US is the example Sunny employs to make his case) because of bitter Republican Primaries, which were divided between Tea Party people and other wings of the Republican Party. Following the primaries, the winner could not always motivate the activist base of the Party, even in some seats which the Republicans had held since Barry Goldwater.

If the scales are about to be rebalanced in favour of the Republicans this November, it’s because the Democrats are divided and have failed to deliver on key pledges, while the Republicans have attempted to shed the legacy (and through the Tea Party movement, the personnel) of a ballooning deficit, a failed war and higher taxation. It’s a false premise to assume that the Right are more pragmatic etc, therefore.

Two other factors deserve consideration. Large numbers of the Republican activist base are less ideologically diverse than their equivalent on the Left. Whether it’s the Tea Party libertarians or the values voters, the same candidates can fill both bills; small business owners who promise reduce the deficit, shrink the liberty-hating federal government and to inscribe the Ten Commandments where the Bill of Rights used to be.

The other factor is the role of business. If someone can’t appeal to the money, they can’t get elected. This helps to simplify things for the Republicans, as it does for the Democrats, but the difference is in the attitudes of the activist base to business. Whereas for Democrats, support from business usually means someone unwilling to support labor unions and other policies the activist base wants, for the Republicans, extreme religion, libertarianism and business can walk together.

There are contradictions between the various strands of Republican ideology, but they are much less pronounced than the wider contradiction that makes itself felt within Democratic politics – the attempt to bridge the divide between labour and capital. It’s this contradiction that is so poisonous to the link between movement and leadership on the Left – not a failure to be pragmatic, on the part of the wider Left movements.

It bears saying that Republican leaders suffer the same phenomenon; disconnection from their movement, once they are faced with the reality of governing a capitalist economy. Their movement doesn’t react any better to this than the Democrats do – and this was easily visible at the last election, where McCain failed to win more than half the States at primary level which Republicans went on to win in the General.

If there is a difference between Republicans and Democrats in this respect, it’s simply that Republicans can get their base motivated by social issues, and still pursue their economic agenda, while Democrats can’t. There are few social issues left to fight, with homophobia, institutional racism and sexism all in retreat – the majority of the key Democratic issues (including race) are ultimately on an economic footing.

Sunny concludes his article with a dig at the ‘liberal movement’ which assumed its job was done when Obama was elected. Having made my case about the problematic link between leaders and movements in Left politics, I’d like to flip that. It was the Democratic leadership which assumed the job of its entailed popular movement was done, not the movement itself – and the answer is to make politicians more accountable to their party.

Second contention; approaching  the electorate to tell them that actually we can’t really change all that much is not a recipe for success either at the ballot box or with Left-wing activists. A large part of this country feels profoundly disconnected from its government. The need for great change hasn’t been this obvious since the 1960s.

Unfortunately that disconnection often translates into bargain-basement libertarianism or even survivalism (witness the outpouring of sympathy for Moat online). We need to change that – and we do so through organisations that have inscribed at their core the need for comprehensive change.

Our political parties and our unions are on the front line there.

Third contention; the degree to which Lefties are focused on Parliament is a problem. A small minority (all in leadership positions and think-wank jobs, and this should tell us something) believe  that asking our political class very politely for the things we want will eventually pay dividends if we present the right argument, with the right evidence. A very British revolution indeed. The only problem I see here is that people like this tend to be go-to figures for the mainstream media and also tend to have a strong presence on the web.

The degree to which Lefties aren’t focused on Parliament is also a problem. I don’t know whether or not the people at Democracy Village are members of political parties, but I agree that their ideas are woolly in the extreme. That said, it’s my view that the only meaningful form of engagement with politics is to be a member of a Party (and a union). The sort of thinking that goes on in DemocracyVillage and elsewhere is really just think-wankery inverted, for a non-professional class of idealists.

We can correct this. The Left has specific parties and people should be members of them. It doesn’t matter whether it’s the Labour Representation Committee, the Socialist Party, the SWP or even the Greens that matches your particular Left view, parties are the key to Parliament, and democratic organising is the key to any given political party.

Fourth contention; that we Lefties are in-fighting happy, while the Tea Party movement is tightly focused on destroying the Democrats. This is a misrepresentation, again. The professional politicos attached to the Tea Party movement, and the serious degree of corporate finance which backs them, are serious about destroying the Dems. The average Tea Party punter is as howl-at-the-moon crazy and unfocused as anyone else in the general population, who hasn’t descended to the level of blogoland anorak.

The Left does fight within itself, a lot, and so does the Right. It’s the nature of people with strong beliefs to fight with others of strong beliefs. The British Right and British Left both have splits; the BNP, UKIP, Tories and Lib-Dems all occupy overlapping political territory. Thus Lib-Dems, Labour, Greens and TUSC occupy overlapping territory. Within the Tories, groups like Cornerstone are the equivalent of the LRC, though the organising principles are different. And no one who watched the nonsense about Speaker Bercow can contend that the Left is more self-righteous in denunciation than our opponents across the aisle.

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All of this is by way of saying what? The Left should celebrate the freedom to criticise and tenacity shown by those investigating the leadership contenders and those others who haven’t run for leader but clearly think of themselves as being political minds worthy of shaping the debate (thus Cruddas, Purnell, etc).

We should bemoan not some inherent tendency to split but contingent problems with our democratic organisations.

We should agree with Sunny that politics is a fight – but simultaneously while fighting people who are clearly ‘the enemy’, you have to be able to articulate your own vision in contrast to others who are or present themselves as being on ‘our’ side. Government allows for one answer to the questions that confront us – not the number of competing answers that exist within the same political party.

Finally we should allow that it’s not this competition even among nominal friends which weakens our movement. That competition is inevitable. What weakens the movement is an inability to reach a collective decision and then implement it; it is the separation between those who implement and those who feel it their right to decide.

A propensity to ignore this is the problem with “the problem with the Left” articles.