Notes towards Progressive Tactics that Meet the New Fascist Challenge

I am easily led astray by titles of books and articles that I never get around to reading. Some years ago, "The Long Emergency," 2005, by James Howard Kunstler got me writing about the looming extinction of The United Church of Canada and mainstream Protestant churches in general. And today, Monday, November 25, 2024, I saw "If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and the Missing Revolutions," 2023, by Vincent Bevins in the window of my neighbourhood bookstore, and got wondering: Yes. Why have the progressive strategies and tactics (e.g. mass protests) I have supported failed so abjectly, so miserably. Indeed, seem to have resulted in the complete opposite of the hoped for objectives.

I don't believe that the success of Donald Trump can be explained as being solely due to the failures of progressives. But I do think that we progressives must take a hard look at the presumptions that have shaped the strategies and tactics we have used - and make new choices.

I myself am too old (79) and White, male, straight, well-off, etc. to articulate what speaks to the lived experience of those under 40, non-White, non-male, non-well-off, etc. But I am old enough to have the lived experience of 1960's protests resulting in today's impoverishing unaffordability, worsening fossil fuel damage, and failure of liberal democracies to reign in global capitalism. How did I get there from here?

Two days ago, Catherine Ross urged me to read, "A Manifesto for Speculative Relations," by Joseph M. Pierce in the book, "The Alchemy Lecture 2: Five Manifestos for the Beautiful World," 2024. Pierce references an article by Daniel Heath Justice, "Notes Toward a Theory of Anomaly," GLQ:A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 16, 2010. 

And here I am with my own "Notes Toward ...." As Justice says (but I'm not quoting) in his Notes, these are beginnings, incomplete, insufficient, incorrect. And as I will say: strategies and tactics do not change the stories we tell ourselves to give meaning, purpose, orientation to our daily lived experience. But that is precisely the change that is needed for human culture to be aligned with ecological flourishing.

I'm going to keep editing this post. But here goes for now.

1. "Science" and "Facts" Are So Last Century. Stop Whining.

We need to use all available means to flood all zones with progressive propaganda.

We need to flood all zones with progressive loyalty and all-in commitment memes. 

2. Pragmatism Trumps Ethics (Pun intended)

Okay, I get that we have to constantly clarify what progressive ethics and values are and look like. But when it comes to strategies and tactics we also have to be pragmatic. We have to face the hard reality that in some contexts - like fascism for example - "love," openness," and "kindness" need tactics that are effective. Progressives too often don't realize that "openness" is actually a position that is not open to all behaviours; not open to dialogue with with all political options.

We need to make not being progressive shameful, unthinkable, and punishable.

2. Analysis Divides. Strategies and Tactics Must Unite.

For those too young to remember, back in the 1950's analysis, strategies, and tactics were a harmonious trinity. That's because back in the 1950's analysis presumed patriarchy, racism, sexism, classism. Powerful white, neuro-normal, straight males ran the (Western) world. And that was unquestioned, taken-for-granted. And so not too surprisingly, their analysis smoothly revealed the strategies and tactics that would advance their interests. And since "their" meant "mankind" which meant "everyone," it was not necessary to ask who was actually benefitting. (And the previous 3 "And ..." sentences are an example of the ubiquitous propaganda of that time that White-washed the actual reality.)

But the rise of 1960's hippies, feminism, black civil rights, anti-Viet-Nam-war broke the presumptions of how to "analyze." Analysis now required identity. Required identifying specific personal characteristics: age, race, gender, class, sexual orientation / identity, indigeneity, ability, neuro-spectrum, etc. This rise of identity analysis / identity politics is core to progressive movement. 

But I believe we have made a mistake. Identity analysis separates and divides. But the world we live in is always complete, whole, fully interconnected. And so strategies and tactics always have to ask, How can we change the story, the context, the capitalistic structure for the flourishing of all? (Well, maybe not you fascists, you racists, you billionaires.)

3. What Does a "Global Climate Catastrophe" Have to Do With Price of Eggs?