Other Voices: The Connexions Newsletter |
This Issue: Time to Talk? |
Things aren’t going well.
That is a sentiment that many people – probably most people -- around the world would agree on.
There are so many problems that even listing them threatens to become tedious: the economy,
climate and the environment, war, including the risk on nuclear war, mass migration by millions
of people unable to making a living, or even survive where they are, housing and homelessness,
health care systems in crisis, genocide in Gaza. In the world’s most powerful nation, a lunatic is
now in power, with consequences no one can foresee. Many people are so pre-occupied with survival that they can’t summon the energy or the mental
space to engage in politics. In any case, politics, as traditionally defined, offers few options for
bringing about change. Political parties and politicians operating within the structures of so-called
liberal democracy make vague promises about making things better, but, when elected, double
down on the status quo, the system in which the rich get richer while most people are
progressively worse off. The political forces which have displayed the most energy, and mobilized the most support, are
those on the political right. Their support comes, not only, or even mostly, from those who
identify as right-wing, but from people who are frustrated and angry, often for perfectly
understandable reasons. Encountering nothing but platitudes or contempt from liberals and self-
defined progressives, they tune out the left and tune in to the messages of the populist right,
which has been taking over the political terrain once occupied by the left.
So what role is there for those of us who still identify with what used to be called ‘the left?’ What
do we have to say and who do we say it to?
While we surely need to think about what we have to say, perhaps who we say it to is the more
important question.
There is a general answer to the question of who we need to talk to: we need to talk to people
who disagree with us.
If we want to change the world, we need other people – millions, eventually hundreds of millions
of others – to agree that the world needs changing and to join us in changing it. We need to
persuade a majority of the population that a fundamental social and economic transformation is
necessary and desirable. Many of those people distrust anything that is labelled as being ‘left’ or ‘liberal’ or ‘socialist,’
understandably so, given that anti-left bias is one of the abiding characteristics of the media and
other narrative control institutions. Yes people are not impervious to listening to dissenting
political messages and changing their views. The success of right populist forces in engaging
people who were formerly disengaged is proof of that. So why is the left, by and large, failing to reach these people? The most obvious answer is that we
aren’t even trying. With the best of intentions but questionable priorities, the standard practice of
progressive groups is to reach out to the already converted to organize actions which bring
together the same small groups of people to perform the same actions which proclaim their principled dissent from the status quo – and simultaneously proclaim their inability to mobilize
significant numbers of people.
What is all too commonly missing is any serious attempt to reach out to the vast majority of the
population: those who won’t come to, or ever even hear about, the protests of the left.
The most effective way of getting people to engage with new ideas is to talk to them. Actually, no
– we need to talk with them. We need to have actual face-to-face conversations with actual flesh-
and-blood human beings. This is the traditional wisdom of generations of organizers, still
practised by labour union organizers, but not enough by others. Today, political messages are
mostly communicated through social media and other electronic means (yes, like this newsletter!)
That is fine for informing and mobilizing people who already broadly agree with us, but of little
value in reaching people who aren’t interested, or don’t think they are interested, in what we have
to say.
Of course, social media and email appear much more efficient for reaching large numbers of
people, and in a sense they are. But we need to remember that ‘efficient’ and ‘effective’ are
different concepts. Our reliance on electronic media may be efficient, but surely it isn’t effective.
We are constantly losing ground, while the right is constantly gaining. We are failing. We need to
change our approach. We need to talk. This newsletter features some thought-provoking items on ways of working for change.
Subsequent issues will continue the exploration. - Ulli Diemer |
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The Need for a New Political Vocabulary |
The terms used by the corporate media and the political class bear little or no relation to reality,
says Michael Hudson. Political differences between Europe’s centrist parties are marginal, he
says: all support neoliberal cutbacks in social spending in favor of rearmament, fiscal stringency
and the deindustrialization that support of U.S.-NATO policy entails. The word “centrist” means
not advocating any change in the economy’s neoliberalism. Hyphenated-centrist parties are
committed to maintaining the pro-U.S. post-2022 status quo. The Party in power runs Neoliberal
policies; it loses the next election to rivals who, when they get in power, also run neoliberal
policies. They then lose, and the cycle repeats. ‘Social-democratic’ parties that once were on the
left are imposing austerity and cutbacks in social spending. “This is not really conservative or centrist. It is hard-right austerity, squeezing labor and
government spending that the left-wing parties supported long ago. The idea that centrism means
stability and preserves the status quo thus turns out to be self-contradictory. Today’s political
status quo is squeezing wages and living standards, and polarizing economies. It is turning NATO
into an aggressive anti-Russia and anti-China alliance that is forcing national budgets into deficit,
leading social welfare programs to be cut back even further.” |
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Things Don't Always Get Better |
This long essay by a writer who blogs under the name Aurelian deserves the time it will take you
to read it. Grab a coffee and have your brain stimulated.
Aurelian writes: I have thought for some time now that the genuine Left is standing in front of an
open goal. All it has to do is kick the ball in. A Left that showed it was receptive to the concerns of
ordinary people would be poised to sweep into power, but this would require a reconsideration of
thirty years or more of anticipatory cringes....
Demonising the concerns of ordinary people as being “extreme Right” cannot work in the longer
term, and will simply increase populist feeling to the point where it becomes unmanageable. I
have said before, and I repeat, that those who make populism of the Left impossible will make
populism of the Right inevitable.
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Changing Minds on a Changing Climate |
Public discourse has been marked by people digging themselves ever deeper into entrenched
positions, leaving little hope for compromise or reconciliation. But sometimes people do the
unimaginable: They change their minds. An AskReddit discussion poses a tantalizing question,
"Former climate deniers, what changed your mind?" Responses to the query offer a rare glimpse into the processes of how some people switch camps, outgrowing their parents’ values, having transformative experiences, or being worn-down by continually mounting scientific evidence. |
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Simply No Red Lines At All |
Craig Murray, a former British ambassador, summarizes a United Nations report, The UN Report
of the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory,
including East Jerusalem, and Israel. As Murray writes, the report “is incredibly damning and will
be a key document for the ICJ Genocide case against Israel brought by South Africa et al.”
He adds, “I understand that there may be nothing here that you did not already know. But to see it
all set out starkly, by a UN Commission which has verified the information, makes it much more
difficult for the political class simply to ignore.
I am simply unable to begin to understand, on a personal basis, the politicians who can condone,
support and in fact participate in what Israel is doing. It is simply beyond me.”
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Jonathan Cook is an award-winning British journalist. He was based in Nazareth, Israel, for 20
years. He returned to the UK in 2021 but continues to provide regular commentary and analysis
on Israel, Palestine, the Middle East. He blogs about the media, propaganda, corporate
malfeasance, the environment and global politics. Find his website here. |
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Best of Enemies
by Osha Gray Davidson |
Claiborne Paul Ellis, known to all as "C.P.", grew up in the "poor white" section of Durham, North Carolina, just north of the railroad tracks that marked the boundary between the white and black
neighborhoods. Surrounded by poverty and affected early by a pervasive racism, as a young man
C.P. joined the Ku Klux Klan, believing it would stand up for poor white people like himself. Ann
Atwater was a key civil rights organizer in the black community in Durham. As the country
struggled with explosive issues of race and class, Ann met C.P. on opposite sides of the public
school integration issue, where they thrown together against their will as joint chairpersons of a
series of charette meetings. Their encounters were initially charged with hatred and suspicion, but
against all odds they forged an unlikely friendship that lasted decades and that led C.P. to renounce the Klan and become an anti-racist organizer. Read a review here. There's also a film based on their story. |
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In Praise of Civil Disobedience |
Democracy has failed, Craig Murray says, having been fatally corrupted. In these circumstances,
he says, civil disobedience is not just ethically justified, it is the duty of the good citizen.
Read more |
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An account of Grindstone Island, located on Big Rideau Lake, for many years a centre of peace
education.
Read more |
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A short (5-minute) film on the world that could be.
Watch (including the credits at the end) |
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Copyright Connexions 2025. Contents are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License. This means you are welcome to share and republish the contents of this newsletter as long as you credit Connexions, and as long as you don’t charge for the content. This issue was edited by Ulli Diemer. |
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