Enough Already! Critical Media Literacies Series
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Enough Already! Critical Media Literacies Series Series Editor William M. Reynolds (Georgia Southern University, USA) Editorial Board Peter Appelbaum (Arcadia University, USA) Jennifer Beech (University of Tennessee – Chattanooga, USA) Eleanor Blair (Western Carolina University, USA) Ana Cruz (St. Louis Community College, USA) Venus Evans-Winters (Illinois State University, USA) Julie C. Garlen (Georgia Southern University, USA) Nicholas Hartlep (Berea College, Kentucky, USA) Mark Helmsing (George Mason University, USA) Sherick Hughes (University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill, USA) Danielle Ligocki (Oakland University, USA) John Lupinacci (Washington State University, USA) Peter McLaren (Chapman University, USA) Yolanda Medina (Borough of Manhattan Community College/CUNY, USA) Brad Porfilio (Seattle University, USA) Jennifer Sandlin (Arizona State University, USA) Julie Webber (Illinois State University, USA) Handel Kashope Wright (The University of British Columbia, Canada) William Yousman (Sacred Heart University, USA) VOLUME 4 The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/cmls Enough Already! A Socialist Feminist Response to the Re-emergence of Right Wing Populism and Fascism in Media By Faith Agostinone-Wilson අൾංൽൾඇ_ൻඈඌඍඈඇ This is an open access title distributed under the terms of the CC BY-NC 4.0 license, which permits any non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author(s) and source are credited. Further information and the complete license text can be found at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ The terms of the CC license apply only to the original material. The use of material from other sources (indicated by a reference) such as diagrams, illustrations, photos and text samples may require further permission from the respective copyright holder. An electronic version of this book is freely available, thanks to the support of libraries working with Knowledge Unlatched. More information about the initiative can be found at www.knowledgeunlatched.org All chapters in this book have undergone peer review. The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available online at http://catalog.loc.gov ISSN 2666-4097 ISBN 978-90-04-42452-4 (paperback) ISBN 978-90-04-39126-0 (hardback) ISBN 978-90-04-42453-1 (e-book) Copyright 2020 by Faith Agostinone-Wilson. Published by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Hes & De Graaf, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Rodopi, Brill Sense, Hotei Publishing, mentis Verlag, Verlag Ferdinand Schöningh and Wilhelm Fink Verlag. Koninklijke Brill NV reserves the right to protect the publication against unauthorized use and to authorize dissemination by means of offprints, legitimate photocopies, microform editions, reprints, translations, and secondary information sources, such as abstracting and indexing services including databases. Requests for commercial re-use, use of parts of the publication, and/or translations must be addressed to Koninklijke Brill NV. This book is printed on acid-free paper and produced in a sustainable manner. CONTENTS Introduction: An Urgent Situation 1 Chapter 1: On the Relevance and Necessity of Socialist Feminism 5 Introduction 5 Feminisms 7 Key Issues 14 “It Goes without Saying”: Against Brocialism 25 Conclusion 29 Chapter 2: Fascism and Right-Wing Populism: Similarities, Differences, and New Organizational Forms 31 Introduction 31 Conceptual Overview 32 Shared Characteristics of Authoritarian Populism and Fascism 35 Differences 53 New Forms 56 Cautions 59 Chapter 3: Who Is the Real Working Class? Moving beyond the Construction of the White Male Industrial Worker as a Marker of Authenticity 61 Introduction 61 Neoliberalism’s Effects 63 Constructing Capitalism through Race and Gender 70 Diversity of the Working Class 80 Conclusion 89 Chapter 4: Bernie Breakdown: Challenges Facing the Left in the Wake of the Sanders Campaign 91 Introduction 91 The Sanders Campaign: Lessons Learned 93 Conclusion 110 Chapter 5: Well, Actually: Cyber Sexism and Racism within Online Settings and the Enabling Discourse of E-Libertarianism 113 Introduction 113 E-Libertarianism 115 v CONTENTS Forms and Functions of Trolling 125 Cyber Organizing 131 Conclusion 145 Chapter 6: Abortion through the Lens of Fetal Personhood: Social Meanings and Functions 149 Introduction 149 Abortion: An Overview 151 Fetal Personhood: Ideology & Law 155 Oppressive Outcomes of Fetal Personhood 159 Conclusion 170 Chapter 7: In Defense of Science, the Press and Expertise for the Public Good 173 Introduction 173 Attack on Expertise 175 Pseudoscience 179 Fake News 184 Both-Sides-Ism 188 Conspiracy Theories 193 Conclusion 201 Conclusion: Enough Is Enough 203 References 205 Index 219 vi INTRODUCTION An Urgent Situation This is not a hopeful or optimistic book. It is instead a sober assessment and wake- up call for the left as a whole, including centrist liberals. Likewise, this book is not going to spend the majority of time engaged in critique and then try to wrap up with a general plan for how to address the situation we are in. Such actions mean little when the critiques themselves are often fundamentally naïve and flawed to begin with. We are only beginning to realize the nature of the problem. In presenting a retrospective of Andrea Dworkin’s work in The New York Review of Books, Blair (2019) features one of her more famous quotes: This book is an action, a political action where revolution is the goal. It has no other purpose. It is not cerebral wisdom, or academic horseshit, or ideas carved in granite or destined for immortality. It is part of a process and its context is change. (p. 28) In a similar manner, this book is meant to serve as a form of cultural criticism where socialist feminism is used to read media texts. These texts track a growing problem of authoritarian populism and fascism that fails to be confronted in an organized, coherent, and meaningful way. When it is common to have mainstream media outlets entertain the thought of inviting fascists or climate deniers to “debate the issues,” it should be apparent that the gravity of the situation has not yet taken hold. Two primary questions drive this book. First, what is behind the rapid rise of strongman authoritarian populism and fascism, not just in the United States, but globally? Second, what leads these movements to always incorporate misogyny as part of their ideologies? In addressing these questions, this book is not going to spend the majority of its content critiquing the Democrats or other centrist groups. It is not going to devote two or three token sentences acknowledging the danger of far-right views, and then proceed to foster “both sides are equally bad” thinking that often masquerades as hard-hitting critique on the left. Though it should be acknowledged that centrists have facilitated our current situation, their contributions pale in comparison to what right-wing movements as a whole have done and are continuing to do. In advancing a Marxist feminist analysis, this book unapologetically prioritizes minorities, women, and the LGBTQI working class. This means not hesitating to include the white working class as a target of critique when necessary. The focus of this book is confronting fascism and authoritarian populism along with the groups and ideologies that sustain it. We are well past the time on the left where we can skirt around the problem of the white working class’ receptivity to racism and misogyny © FAITH AGOSTINONE-WILSON, 2020 | DOI: 10.1163/9789004424531_001 This is an open access chapter distributed under the terms of the CC BY-NC 4.0 License. INTRODUCTION by conveniently sweeping it under the “false consciousness” rug. Along these lines, this book will not insert “not all men” or “not all white people” every time racism or sexism is mentioned. Sociological generalities will be used as this book deals with sociological concepts. If you can’t paint with a broad brush where needed, the painting won’t get done. Further, I argue that the left’s current approaches are insufficient for effectively confronting authoritarian populism and fascism. Rather than being in a “rough patch” that the next election will cure, what we are seeing is deeply systemic, enabled by a social media architecture, the enormity of which we are only starting to grasp. As Bello (2017) soberly warns us, “progressives must squarely face the fact that these movements are either in power or on the threshold of power—and once they get power, through elections or other means, they have no intention of relinquishing it” (para. 27). Hopes that Trump and other administrations will somehow play themselves out when people realize their sheer incompetence ignores the historical reality that the left once thought the exact same thing prior to the Nazis coming to power (Ulrich, 2016). With few exceptions, the left is extremely naïve about the intentions of the far- right as well as the reliability of mainstream conservatives when it comes to their own enabling for opportunistic reasons. As Sefla (2017) warns, To build the kind of activist movement so the left can win future battles, it will have to learn key lessons in the skirmishes today. The first of these is that the existing institutions of this society can’t be relied upon to stand up for our rights…it’s a dangerous illusion to think that the courts will side with justice and freedom absent mass pressure from below…it’s an even more dangerous illusion, echoed in some liberal circles, to think that certain parts of the military or security apparatus will tame Trump’s excesses. (p. 7) Indeed, the aftermath of the Mueller investigation demonstrates that concepts such as a sitting president cannot be indicted only highlights the tenuous loopholes that have held the system together up to this point. Trump’s conduct has laid bare the fragility of Constitutional protections, and have seemed to taken us by surprise, if not unawares.