Suddenly, every conservative in America was reading Russell Kirk, as rightwing foundations and billionaires were rushing to fund "conservative think tanks" and groups to influence the media and the courts.
Richard Nixon rode the white fear of this change into office that year and set the stage for the 1971 Powell Memo and the rise of Reagan ten years later. Reagan then brought to a screeching halt much of the forward motion of those three movements, along with the gay rights movement, by stripping working class people of wealth and political power while demonizing gays around AIDS.
But nothing stays the same. Circumstances change, failures are exposed, new generations acquire power as old generations pass away. If there's a constant to politics it is this: every new cycle is eventually rejected and replaced as time moves forward.
When Mussolini used state violence to imprison the progressive workers' movement that was then sweeping both America and Europe, Gramsci wondered out loud: "Will the interregnum, the crisis whose historically normal solution is blocked in this way, necessarily be resolved in favor of a restoration of the old?" Or, will this "lead in the long run to widespread skepticism and a new 'arrangement'"?
After all, Gramsci noted, that "new arrangement" would require "a reduction of the highest superstructures" of politics and society, "in other words, the possibility and necessity of creating a new culture."
And, indeed, it appears that's just what's happening today in America.
Starbucks just got their first unionized American store in their 50 years of existence. Kellogg's is engaging in extreme union-busting, firing and replacing striking workers, while Amazon is facing a renewed effort to unionize their warehouses.
Much like with Mussolini's state violence, the only reason there's not been a widespread and successful wave of unionization efforts in America is because multiple Supreme Court decisions since the 1960s have eroded union rights in this country so severely, tilting state power against workers.
While last-gasp-reactionary states like Texas are fighting to put women back into the bedroom and kitchen, progressive states like California are preparing for a post-Roe America by expanding and institutionalizing women's rights to healthcare, contraception and abortion.
Progressive states like Oregon have decriminalized all drugs and provide terminally ill people with a "right to die with dignity," while reactionary Red states are doubling down on their death penalties and Nixon-era anti-drug laws.
Bifurcation, a splitting apart, appears to be the current state of America, but significant social change always happens just as "opposite" forces like these battle for the approval of the larger culture and its media, to soon be followed by its voters.
Corey Robin points out in The New York Times how "regimes grow brittle" and, much like the way the Reagan regime replaced FDR's New Deal regime, we may be at the end of our generation's 40-year neoliberal experiment (my phrase, not his).
For this to actually happen, though, is going to take not just a cultural shift but an actual change in the political and legal structures Reagan's neoliberalism and its reactionary predecessors erected.
It will require, as Robin notes, ending the filibuster, overcoming the resistance of a small handful of sold-out Democrats in Congress (from Sinema/Manchin in the Senate to the "corporate problem solvers" in the House), expanding voting rights while ending partisan gerrymanders, and returning to an explicit right to unionize. I'd add overturning Citizens United and breaking up corporate monopolies to Robin's list.
All of these are within our grasp and, for the first time in over 50 years, are supported by the administration in power and the Democratic Party overall.
The question is whether the forces arrayed against such change, from corporate media (and social media) to packed courts to cranky billionaires, can be overcome.
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
2
1
1
