I agree wholeheartedly with Carrol on the stupidity of Cockburn dreaming of "a populist coalition of left and right on basic issues of liberty" and the impossibility of 'progressive nationalism' in the USA. Cockburn's daydreaming makes him part of the "pwoggies marginally to the left [or to the right, for that matter, depending on issues] of the mainstream." In fact, on this question, Cockburn is more blind than Fred Pfeil, who at least takes note of (while severely underestimating) the real dangers presented by those who are complicit in a desire for a _Herrenvolk Democracy_ in the USA that Adolf Reed Jr., et al pointed out. Fred Pfeil writes in "Sympathy for the Devils: Notes on Some White Guys in the Ridiculous Class War" (from _Whiteness: A Critical Reader_, ed. Mike Hill):
***** Finally, I believe that there is something to do with gender and race at the source of all these misperceptions and half-truths [dreamed up by those who rail against the "New World Order" withtout recognizing the need to abolish capitalism and to build a socialist society], however much it may differ from active racism and sexism. It is these men's bafflement, grief, and rage at the breakdown and/or removal of a profoundly undemocratic patriarchal and neofeudal hierarchy into which they once believed they fit organically, with their own zones of autonomy and deserved privilege, no matter how small....
...For those upscale men's movements to become movements and for militiamen to stop being chumps for the Right, both must muster the strength and wisdom to call their foremost enemy by its correct name, corporate capitalism [Yoshie: Well, Fred Pfeil's qualification "corporate" makes the name less than correct -- why not simply say "capitalism"?], the enclave of those (largely) white men who really own the field and call the shots. But it is hard to imagine either group's ever overcoming its internal resistances to taking this plunge in the absence of any encouragement or invitations to do so from outside their ranks, from other communities suffering as much and, in most cases, more than these men are.... Could such efforts bear fruit? I don't know, but I think I know what will happen if progressives keep lumping together and writing off all white men as being welcomed by reactionaries as an inherently racist sexist tribe [Yoshie: Which "progressive" does Pfeil have in his mind? I fear that if fascism arises in the USA, it will be feminists and anti-racists who will be blamed for "driving white guys over the edge," given the ease with which such sentences as this can be written, giving ammunitions to the likes of Alex Cockburn]. The old homeless black man I was walking with up to the state capital to protest the newest proposed cuts in general assistance and aid to the state's shelter facilities put it just right: "You know what's gonna happen if this shit keeps up?" he said. "There's gonna be class war -- and it's gonna be _ridiculous_." Until we -- all the rest of us, disaffected white males included -- get the names and the sides right, that's what we'll get: ridiculous, obfuscated, unrecognized class war [Yoshie: the kind that Alex Cockburn has been rooting for]....
...Postscript, June 1996
...For leftist analysts of the Buchanan phenomenon, the key question was, first, how much the white working-class votes he got in Iowa and New Hampshire had to do with this addition of a pinch of economic populism to the basic recipe and, second, whether the appeal of that rhetoric would or could under different circumstances retian its power to move voters if separated from the bigotry and chauvinism of the rest of Buchanan's message [Yoshie: Well, why should such a silly speculation be "the key question" at all? "Economic populism" -- whatever Pfeil means by it -- without an opposition to U.S. imperialism _is_ bigotry and chauvinism! That's the problem of "populism" to begin with!]....
Before that spring melt, though, two articles appeared side by side in the April issue of _The Progressive_, whose diametrically opposed views of the potential of economic populism as a galvanizing force in American political life today still seem relevant. In "Ebony and Ivory Fascists," Adolph Reed Jr. claims that this potential has virtually disappeared, that "what we want to interpret as economic populism could just as easily be resonance with a _Herrenvolk democracy_ -- a political assertion of white, male, nativist entitlements as the only truly legitimate citizenship -- that has a long history in American politics." But in "Buchanan Fodder," Jim Nichols, backed by quotations from Ralph Nader, Jim Hightower, and Ronnie Dugger, contends that "progressives" can and must "enter that court [i.e., of economic populism], grab hold of the economic message, cleanse it of Buchanan's bigotries, and use it to advance positive social change."...
...[T]heoretically I believe in the possibility and potential of a clarified and inclusive economic populism for white men among others, because I believe in the possibility and necessity of what Gramsci speaks of as the long, grinding labor of _counter-hegemony_ [Yoshie: That's a misuse of Gramsci, who spoke of the war of positions necessary for the working class and the Communist Party to win hegemony to build _socialism_, not an economic populism (which fascism was, as a matter of fact)] and Althusser [Yoshie: A misuse of Althusser -- whatever his faults, Althusser never broke with Marxism], Stuart Hall, and Laclau/Mouffe [Yoshie: Duh!] speak of as _disarticulation_ -- albeit not as a mere twist of rhetoric but as the hard, slow political work of building organizations, parties, and constituencies; work, that is, that takes into account the shadows cast by historical divisions of race and gender [Yoshie: the very things that Alex Cockburn refuses to take into account] in its efforts to create new and different citizens and communities, in order to redeem the time that is now.... *****
To sum up, Alex Cockburn dreams of winning the right-wing white guys to a "left-populist" vision *without them learning to fight against sexism and racism*. How stupid can he get??? Even Fred Pfeil knows such a dream is not only an impossibility but a real danger. Moreover, while Alex Cockburn fancies himself to be "tougher" than and superior to "pwoggies" like Fred Pfeil or Laclau/Mouffe, his inability to clearly argue for socialism (and against sexism, racism, & nationalism) from his platform, and hence his dreaming up an impossibility such as "a populist coalition of left and right on basic issues of liberty" as a substitute for communism, basically make him not only a vicarious warrior in a "ridiculous, obfuscated class war" but just another late modern "pwoggie" who has resigned himself to the "world without a hope for communism." No Future, indeed. I'll dedicate T. S. Eliot's "Gerontion" to Alex Cockburn.
no sympathy for a bitter old man,
Yoshie