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- [00:00]
A
AI this, AI that. I get it. I'm so sick of people telling me to just use AI. But weirdly enough, wix's new AI website builder really works for me. It's called WIX Harmony. And here's the thing. I get to choose how to use AI. I get everything I need to create a website. And I can either have Aria, my AI agent, design things for me, or I can edit things myself. Try it for free@wix.com Harmony. Influencers go to war over Cuba, a progressive icon falls, and the UK Girl Guides kick out trans girls. Those are the stories we'll be covering today on the Compact Podcast. I'm Jeff Schulenberger, stepping in this week for Matthew Schmitz. And I'm joined by Ashley Frawley. So we'll start with Foreign affairs, specifically the island just 90 miles south of Florida, Cuba. Ashley, have you ever been to Cuba?
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B
I have, I have. And when we were talking about what we're going to talk about. Oh, yeah. Have you been to Cuba?
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A
I've never been to Cuba. I asked you because I. Well, I feel like all the Canadians I meet turn out to have gone to Cuba. So that's why I asked. I figured that you figured that you had.
- [01:50]
B
I was surprised. I was surprised at the question. Of course I've been to Cuba. But then I realized. You're American. No. And while we were actually discussing this, what we're going to talk about, I was like, oh, I'm trying very. Because they're like residual bits of wokeness in me. Like, not even. So were you there, you know, were
- [02:11]
A
you there on some kind of Marxist solidarity brigade excursion?
- [02:18]
B
It became that. I don't even want to talk. I was. It was 2014. And I very drunkenly. No, I can't admit what I did. I. Well, I. I know all the lyrics. Is that about how you ended, let's say.
- [02:35]
A
Nice. Nice.
- [02:37]
B
Yeah. So I was like very still ultra socialist then and very much pro Cuba. So I was worried. I was like, oh, am I? Like, have I sufficiently progressed in my thinking? And then I remembered that, yes, I realized in 2022 that it was over, really and fully, that I had to forget about my dear Che and move on and recognize what has actually happened in the world. And. Yeah, so I'm prepared to do it. I'm prepared to talk about the Ash. Trying to say this politely like the. The hurricane that is Cuba now.
- [03:22]
A
Yeah. So the reason for our conversation is, first of all, we saw a limited regime change operation in Venezuela, which for a long Time had been Cuba's primary benefactor and sponsor, especially after the fall of the Soviet Union, for many decades. Cuba was really a sort of, you know, a country that mainly subsisted off of aid from the Soviet Union sent in exchange for sugar primarily. So it had moved from a situation of a kind of neocolonial dependency on the United States after the US Ruled the, the country directly for some years after the war of 1898, and then became its kind of neocolonial overlord, producing a great deal of resentment, ultimately leading to the Cuban Revolution. Make to, to make a long story short, the Cuban Revolution promises national liberation sovereignty and instead what it really delivers is a situation of being the, the westernmost satellite of the, the Soviet bloc, which, which Cuba is for many years then is plunged into Crisis in the 90s after the loss of Soviet aid, at this point, really expands its tourism as a way of obtaining foreign currency reserves. And particularly Canadians and Europeans, still not Americans for the most part because, because there is a, an ongoing travel ban. Although my wife went to Cuba 20 years ago, other people I know, you know, managed to evade this ban in various ways. So it's not, it's not impossible, but it was largely quite difficult. But nonetheless, Cuba became a sort of, you know, a center for tourism, but has, has remained something of a basket case, subsisting largely again on the largesse of Venezuelan oil, particularly in the boom times when Venezuela was, was rich from high oil prices. So, you know, fast forwarding to this year, Venezuela has been strong armed by, after the ouster of Nicolas Maduro, has been strong armed by the Trump administration into largely doing its bidding in exchange for being able to sell its oil more freely. And this means it has had to cut off its previous shipments of oil to Cuba. There's also been pressure on Mexico, another supplier of oil to Cuba, to, to not send it. And therefore there have been blackouts. And it does seem there's, there's a real kind of maximum pressure campaign to finally oust the Cuban government. It's not clear, obviously, we've already seen the Venezuela operation. We have an ongoing situation in Iran, and it's not clear exactly what the plan is other than continue strangling Cuba until maybe something happens. But maybe after they're, after they've sort of washed their hands of the situation in the Middle east, they'll decide, okay, this will be a bit easier, so maybe we'll do this in any case, in bold opposition to the seeming threat hanging over Cuba from Washington, a much more vigorous one than we've seen for some time a brave convoy of the most important cultural figures of our time. Influencers, Twitch streamers, YouTubers, showed up in Havana to show their solidarity with the regime. These included, perhaps most notably Hassan Piker, as well as the Irish Northern Irish rappers Kneecap were some of the prominent figures in this group. And another, another person there was the daughter of Representative Ilhan Omar, who was previously seen at a pro Palestine encampment at Columbia University a couple years ago. So some of the great luminary back in the 1960s after the Cuban revolution, figures like Jean Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, the great Latin American writers of the era, Garcia Marquez, Vargas Llosa, all made regular trips to Havana. Susan Sontag, you know, many of the great intellectuals and artists of the time were seen rubbing shoulders with Fidel and the other leaders of the revolution back in the 60s. So today, you know, we have a glorious equivalent of that in our most renowned Twitch streamers showing up to show their solidarity. So we've seen some sort of mockery of this. You know, they're champagne socialists. Hassan Piker is in fact very wealthy from his, his extremely successful streaming career. He's a multimillionaire and was indeed staying in a five star hotel in Havana. As I mentioned, there's a tourism industry there that's, that's quite, quite extensive because it really is one of the only major industries that brings in, that brings in foreign cash. And so they were able to enjoy the luxurious side of living on the island even while they express solidarity with the Cuban people, regardless of what the Cuban people may actually think about their current government. Then on the other hand, we have another influencer who has weighed in on the situation in Cuba. This is none other than Sandro Castro, grandson of Fidel, the leader of the revolution, who has become something of a, a notable influencer whose photos and videos often seem to offer a subtle critique of, of the mismanagement of the island's affairs by the current government. And he, you know, has, has, I'm quoting from a New York Times article here which reported on his, his career. You know, he's, he's obviously not, he's not offering a kind of straight up dissident message. Instead he's offering kind of satirical asides about the current situation on the island. And I will quote from this Times article a description of one such. In one clip, he sexually strokes a nozzle at a gas station. What is this? I've been at it for 24 hours and nothing is coming out. He says in the Video published last month amid widespread gas shortages. So clearly Zumer, regardless of the isolation of Cuba from the rest of the world, you know, the sort of zoomer online culture is still, Is still booming there. And seemingly Mr. Castro, perhaps because of his connections to the ruling dynasty, has. Has not been called in for questioning or arrested over his, his, you know, his sort of samizdat, Instagram accounts critiquing the regime. A real sort of Solzhenitsyn for our age. So in any case, I was curious if you had any, especially given your own experience participating in a kind of, you know, solidarity, an ideological solidarity mission to Cuba in an earlier period. What you made of this, of this episode, you know, again, involving these, these celebrity lefty streamers. And then on the other hand, this scion of the. The Castro dynasty who is, who has become a subtle online critic of the regime.
- [11:34]
B
I am a little sad. I am a little sad. More than a little sad. I promised somebody in Cuba that I would tell the world that Cuba was still fighting for the revolution. This is 11 years ago, and that's not the case anymore. And not even, like, I mean, I don't know, maybe among regular. Maybe there are people just like that person that I promised that are still have hope in their hearts. But, you know, the turning point for me was in 2022 with Cuba's family code, because that is the wet dream of every EU bureaucrat. That is the end goal. Every busy body, state handler of the citizenry, everything that they have been pushing for and wanting, it's all in there. Like the, it's like giving children rights against their parents. The, the underlying sense of the child is the oppressed subject. The recasting really, of the entire socialist. Not even, I mean, like, it's implicit, right? But this, it embodies this recasting of the entire socialist project as basically the empowerment of different oppressed groups, which is not what it was, which is not the point. And, you know, go back to the 19th century, there were movement. These were movements of working men, working men. And that doesn't mean that it's only a place for men, but it's about the empowerment of the subject, which was a masculine subject. And I'm not saying that like it's. It's very difficult. I, I recommend you have a look at my piece, How Society Got a Sex Change or the Fall of Maternal Liberalism to kind of understand what I'm talking about here, because I'm garbling it, but the. These were like. It was a powerful subject embodied in a Stereotypical kind of masculinity that was about autonomy and you know, and over time we allowed women into that. That was the progressive thing was like actually no, you women too, we were idiots by thinking you're irrational, close to nature and little fl, no, you too are powerful, you too are rational, capable of self governance, reason and so on. And this is the basis of your, your role, your, your existence as citizens. No, it's all flipped around now and it's like, no, actually we are vulnerable and, and the purpose of subjectivity is actually, or the, the goal is to kind of de, subject, de, subjectivize ourselves and to be, protect, protected by the state. Protected by the state. So the state comes in and protects you by giving you all these little special rights and, and so on. And I, I, and this was like, this is the neoliberal project or the post liberal project as I call it. The, the death of that enlightenment project that was embodied in that kind of masculine subject who knew itself and dared to know and this sort of thing. And then when I saw that in Cuba, I was like, oh my gosh, this is all this, These are the NGOs here. So when, you know, I saw Trump saying, yeah, we'll take Cuba, I was like, Cuba's already taken, Cuba's gone. All it needs is like the official taking. It's, it's, it's over. Like, it's got the, it like clearly has fallen to the ngo global NGO complex. It no longer believes in that, that subject that was, you know, a lot of people really see the end of the possibility of any kind of socialist continuation of bourgeois capitalism as dying with Che Guevara. And I think that's true. I mean, I personally, I think it probably was 1848. Like that was just, you know, we were just, you know, capitalism wasn't just, just didn't realize quite yet what was happening. And, and like at the last minute it was like, oh no, actually this is kind of, we probably should not enshrine in our constitutions a right to work. That would actually not be a good thing for capitalism. And anyways, so I, I, I, I tend to think it was over in 1848, but a lot of people think it was over in 19, in, in the 1950s. And I, I, I am sympathetic to that and I see it more and more because what people are now fighting for, what these influencers are fighting for, what socialism has become is about a, is a vulnerable subject that requires protection and it's constantly going all around the world looking for the most Vulnerable, the most vulnerable. It doesn't want to empower. It doesn't want. No, it wants to empower people in the sense of like I have power and I give it to you. It doesn. Someone rising up to take control of their lives because fundamentally doesn't really believe in the ability of human beings to self govern. And, and by people I mean the working class, you know, people who might have bad ideas in their head. Whatever it has. It's a lot of these movements are down to like management and giving people the right values like teaching people that actually you shouldn't be homophobic and transphobic and have sex changes on the government dime and all this sort of thing. That's what socialism has become. And it's become intensely anti Western which is regressive. Because socialism was at least the incarnations that were the most powerful that were birthed in the 19th century were continuation of capitalism, of the western project. They were seeing it through. It was. You couldn't have all of these great lofty ideals that were born during the French Revolution until you had another revolution. It was about carrying that forward, carrying the dream of the human subject birthed in the 18th century forward into a future where it could actually be realized. Nobody believes in that now. They're looking for something that is anti Western that will destroy that project and come up with something that is fundamentally different. And you can understand why because things went horribly wrong in the 20th century. You know the, the social really existing. Socialism wasn't great. It failed. And people are looking for alternatives. But they are saying that they have convinced themselves that because these, these. The western project has failed even in its socialist form that it has to be fundamentally overturned fundament. It has to. We have to start somewhere else. We have to find it in the other. We have to find it in some pre capitalist form and like maybe an indigeneity and this sort of thing and I think this is completely wrong and. And backward and was actually tried too is one of the failures of the 20th century was Nazism was fascism which was all were which were also profoundly anti liberal movements that were trying also to find some source of realness in the blood and soil. That was a new kind of subject that was capable of some kind of subjectivity or governance that was more conducive to stability or whatever it might be and the horrors of that. Nobody needs to be reminded of it. So we're kind of, you know, I mean I don't want to like repeat endlessly the sort of like end of history. There is no alternative. But this is where we are now. And it all. It seems like all roads lead to the NGO complex. All roads lead to, like, empowering the children of the world. And like gay marriage. That's like the end of history. And like sex changes on demand. It's the end of history. Prohibiting parents from disciplining their children, flattening out all hierarchies. That's it. That's the extent of it. And meanwhile, you know, the actual, the, the thing that we've been told, you know, and we're going to move on to Shabaz now, I think, but the thing that we're constantly being told is like, actually it was all kind of a wrong turn the way that socialists were going. They were a bit too homophobic, bit too sexist, bits too, you know, traditional and so on. Really, the whole thing was always about, like, equality of all these different groups, blah, blah, blah, and welcoming with open arms. No, no, no, really, it was about political economy. Really, it was about working the, like, class solidarity. And that's like the last thing that nobody will talk about is political economy and class. That's like the last sort of place where you can be just as evil and mean and discriminatory as you want. And yet that is the most powerful and volatile and revolutionary part of society. And it is utterly disempowered and actually is being made to bear the brunt of all of these little parties and dances and safety ism and LGBTIQ this and that and immigration with open arms. They are the ones who are meant to actually engage in the business of integrating everybody and so on, and, and they're the ones who are punished when they don't. And they're the ones who are going to be punished when global capitalism fully takes over, you know, even in the guise of, like, equality or. And brotherhood or whatever it might be, or sisterhood or rainbows or whatever it might be.
- [21:08]
A
Yeah, I'm struck by the points you just made. I wasn't aware of this family code, but I don't, so I can't comment on it. But I will note that I suspect part of what's going on there is again, I mean, the problem with the Cuban revolution is it promised autonomy and sovereignty, but it never actually achieved that. And the country remains highly dependent in various ways. And my sense of why it might look kind of like what various EU interests wants to achieve is that because Cuba is cut off from the US and doesn't have, you know, doesn't have any other sponsors left, I would guess that there's a great deal of sort of EU progressive NGO influence in Cuba because, I mean, the Venezuelans are sending them oil, but they're not sending them, you know, sort of NGO consultants. So they're probably getting those from Europe just because that's, that is where a lot of their tourists come from. So it does strike me that, yeah, I mean, one thing that's notable that people pointed out was a lot of the, the discourse in the. Among this influencer convoy was about Palestine actually. So, you know, it goes to your point that really this is about finding these kind of victim groups that can, can be seen as sort of clients of this, you know, this kind of left wing pity, pro, kind of ideological pity project. And so Cuba can just kind of be fit into that, you know, victims of imperialism sort of projects. But, and, and that I think does contrast with. And I'm not, you know, I'm, I'm not like. I mean, it's, it's very famously the case that the early Cuban revolution was highly homophobic. You know, this actually led to some, some controversies over the years. But if people are interested in this, there's a great memoir by the Cuban writer Reynaldo Arenas, who as a gay writer who came up, you know, was, was of the generation that kind of came of age after the revolution. And so he was really a child of the revolution. And the, it's, it's a totally, it's, it's. I mean, it's a beautifully written book, but it is also kind of about the place of homosexuality within the early and sort of middle period of the revolution. And you know, clearly there, there, there were a lot of kind of tensions in the, the project as it was original. But you know, there was this kind of highly masculine project of kind of trying to reassert sovereignty and autonomy through work and specifically through sort of physical labor. And that, you know, created some kind of complicated tensions, particularly with the sort of intellectuals who often attach themselves to the, to the project in the, in their early years. But in any case, I do, I find, yeah, I suppose I find it kind of sad as well. I don't have, you know, I can neither lament nor celebrate the possible impending demise of the Cuban regime. It's just, it's clearly a kind of failed project of again of sovereignty and autonomy, of, you know, an attempt to pursue an independent political path that has been sort of thwarted in various ways and also internally kind of eroded and betrayed. But, you know, I'm struck by. This is something my, my mother told me a long time ago that when she was a kid, you know, and the Cuban Revolution happened, my grandparents were sort of pretty normie, you know, sort of New Deal Democrats, I suppose. But, you know, when my mom became more left wing and sort of active, you know, they were pretty hostile to all of that and hostile to the new left. But she specifically remembered that when they first found out about Castro and the Cuban Revolution, you know, in the, in the lead up to it, and shortly after he took power, my grandfather, you know, is probably, I don't know, for in his 40s or 50 by this point, said, you know, if he was still young enough, he would go and like, join the, join the Cuban revolutionaries because he was so inspired by their, by their project. And so that there was kind of this moment when I think, I think before it became aligned with the Soviet bloc when it was just seen as this, you know, this kind of nat, you know, this nationalist project of reasserting sovereignty. And I don't see that at all here. I think, you know, the project of the, the lefty convoy is, you know, let's kind of absorb this into the as, as you said, this kind of eu progressive, multinational, NGO dominated framework. And the, the right wing dream is just to, you know, may open Cuba back up to capitalism and fill it with casinos and have it be a great place to go party on weekends.
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B
Beauty is we're going to get both.
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A
Yeah, exactly. That's right. That's right. So who said there was no hope for this, for this century? We'll have, we'll get to have both, you know, casinos and, I don't know, sort of LGBTQ NGOs, you know, kind of operating behind the scenes in the new, the glorious new Cuban regime. So moving on to another, another story about progressive politics, the New York Times released a bombshell. You know, deeply reported accounts of the abuses committed by United Farm Workers founder and very important labor leader Cesar Chavez in his career, again, as probably the most important labor leader as well as the most visible Latino activists of the 1960s through 1980s, approximately. And so Chavez, you know, he's really a giant in the history of progressive politics. He has many things named after him, especially in California and the Southwest. Although his activism was really focused on labor and labor conditions, you know, less so on, on identity politics per se, he did become an important figure for sort of Latino identity or Chicano identity in the United States, again, particularly in the west in California. I can tell you, having lived in California, that his name is or was, because now it's being taken down everywhere on streets, you know, his face on murals, etc. So Chavez was accused by a number of, of women, including women who were, who were young girls at the time of rape and coercive sexual abuse over the course of many years. And one of his accusers was Dolores Huerta, who's his most notable collaborator and somebody who also has her name on quite a few things because she was so heavily involved in the same, same campaigns as him. And obviously there are many things to say about this one and I'm curious to get your thoughts. One, you know, it's interesting that this is coming out now. Obviously these things happened many years ago. Chavez has been dead for some time and many of the people who are revealing or divulging this now have been sitting on it for a while. It's also interesting that we are no longer in the peak MeToo moment. And it's interesting that these revelations didn't occur at that time, but are occurring now. And I'd say, I mean a few things that are interesting about it. One, you would think given the centrality of sort of immigrant rights and Latino immigrant rights and Latino activist groups to this moment, that the optics of sort of taking down this galvanizing figure for various of those causes would be ones if you were running or involved in left wing causes or committed to them in some way, it wouldn't seem like the most convenient thing to happen at this moment. On the other hand, it's worth noting that Chavez has long been sort of a controversial figure and Compact has actually published one or two things about this history because he was critical of illegal immigration. He was actually a proponent of strong border enforcement for the simple reason that the workers in the, the farms of California whose interests he was advocating obviously didn't benefit when there was a constant influx of new migrants who could be used as scabs to undermine their labor activism. So that's always been a bit of a problem for Chavez because obviously there's a desire to make him into, into a sort of avatar of, you know, migrant activism. But in fact he was actually quite critical and, and opposed to uncontrolled immigration during his, during his lifetime and at least his peak years of activism. I think he may have sort of moderated some, but you know, this is something he had in common with much of the labor movement at the time, which broadly was in favor of restricting the, the flow of new labor into the country for relatively obvious sort of self interested reasons. And so it has occurred to me not necessarily in a conspiratorial way, but that he did become sort of sacrificeable partly for that reason that at this point, there isn't really a strong presence in the labor movement of people who hold his positions on migration. And certainly most of the activist, you know, progressive left, disagrees with what he stood for on migration. So that's. That's one thing that stands out to me. You know, another is just he's another of these kind of men of this era. So obviously, he's a kind of strong male figure advocating for a kind of. I mean, I mean, obviously he had women, including Dolores Huerta, by his side. But, you know, he does. He does represent a kind of activism that, as you were saying a minute ago, Ashley, kind of centered on this traditional figure of the predominantly male coded worker. So that may be some way that he's just become a somewhat more passe figure in the current cultural conjunction. But, you know, so I don't have a clear answer as to why this is happening now, but those things did strike me. What. What are your takeaways?
- [33:22]
B
Yeah, I mean, it's. It was really interesting. I was watching this, just this interview on, I don't know, PBS or something with Miriam Powell, who was a. Wrote a biography of Chavez. And it was very interesting because she's. She's talking about, oh, yeah, he did all these terrible things. And, you know, we're starting to realize now that a lot of his. His, you know, stances and the way that he was. You know, the way that he was toward women, his sexism and his views on immigration were really, you know, awful aspects of that really tarnishes. So. And I found that very interesting how he. How she kind of elided his stances with immigration, with his, like, rape of a woman. Like, oh, these were these horrible things that he did. And we know better now. And that really strikes me as the core of it, that first of all, labor no longer represents labor. So like a lot of the groups that claim to stand for the labor movement are they really. They stand for safetyism and inclusion and claim to stand for labor, but really just want positions regulating them and promise to regulate the working class and tame them and want to draw these kinds of truces with. Often want to draw truces with the bosses and the managers, and they are often the managers themselves. And I'm taking a lot of this, I should say, from. I just read Gord McGill's new book that actually came, comes out today, as of this recording, Wednesday, 24th of March, called End of the Road. And he describes this just so perfectly in relation to truckers and the way that the supposed representative representatives of truckers don't actually represent them. They, they represent the promise to contain the risk and to create these regulations that allow the ruthless exploitation of truckers, but will write up really nice PowerPoints and codes of behavior and regulations that say this is all going to be safe and it's those nasty truckers when they don't do their job properly and meet all the regulations and the codes which are not possible to meet while you actually do the job. And then who's holding the risk at the end of the day? The, the trucker. So I think a lot of what has happened is that the labor movement, the left and so on, has abandoned actual labor in favor of a regulatory role in safety and inclusion and promise instead to make workplaces safe and make them inclusive. And, and ironically, as I was saying, this puts all that risk into the hands of the workers then. And you see this in so many different places, like I wrote a paper about, a number of papers about this using the idea concept of regulatory capitalism. But while I was researching, for instance, mental health and universities and this project, this British Academy funded project, so we're doing all these interviews with these people working, supposedly working on mental health in universities, kept looking for someone who does something and nobody did anything. They're like, oh no, we, we, we provide frameworks, we provide lists and oh, I don't deal with that mental illness thing. No, no, no. And then we found that if you actually had a mental illness, you, there was nothing for you. They just kept pushing you, pushing you. Oh, you go here, you go there, you go there. And then they wound up at the GP and the nhs. The NHS is like, no, no, no, you're not our responsibility, go back to the university. Because nobody wants to actually hold the risk. And this is essentially what all these organizations are doing now, is that they promise to be risk regulators, but actually what they do is they shift risk downstream. Another person who's talked about this in, in compact is Lisa McKenzie where she talks about how, you know all these wonderful phrases of immigration and inclusiveness and, and actually solidarity is not on the basis of class, solidarity is on the basis of groups and the oppressed of the earth and solidarity with the oppressed and so on. You awful, white, nasty people. White, what do you call it? Supremacists and so on. And then you wind up in working class communities where all these people that we're supposed to, you know, welcome with open arms and multiculturalism get dumped off and and then you have your 15, she describes her, you know, you have a 15 year old daughter walking down the street getting sexually harassed and you say something about it and you are a nasty racist. And so the working class has to deal with the actual results of the inclusion. They are supposed to include these people, they're supposed to carry out at the end of the day all the wonderful little frameworks and so on. And that is essentially what it has become. But historically of course you would agitate against immigration or at least attempt to understand how immigration was being used to drive down wages, discipline, labor, replace you. If you said anything going back to Gord McGill, what he's describing in relation to truckers, like the horrendous exploitation of immigrant labor that is then being used to discipline and push skilled drivers out of driving. And the way that this is just utterly accepted with open arms and embraced by, by the left when it's, you know, when they're actually at the end of the day cheering on the ruthless exploitation of the most vulnerable in their own words, these, these immigrant people from Asia, from India and Pakistan I think. And, and Gord showed me GoFundMe pages, just page after page after page of GoFundMes of these drivers, these immigrant drivers who are getting killed and their, and their families back home are asking for money to send their bodies home. You know, and, but this whole thing, because the, the left and labor has been become like redefined as like inclusion, that's it. And like creating safety frameworks that are not possible to, they actually at the end of the day make things less safe because it's not possible. It's actually just about covering your butt essentially. It's not actually making things safer. They are completely and totally unable to see or make sense of how immigration can be used in this way. You know, and they just think like, oh, people who are anti immigration, they hate immigrants. No, like it's, it's bad for the immigrants too to be coming and, and work and working as indentured slaves essentially. Like every time that you hear somebody say, oh well, we have a worker shortage, we don't have enough, we need to have immigration. Because American workers won't do these jobs. And it's so great, just add on American workers won't do these jobs at the growing, at the going rate and in current conditions because that is the case. It's, it's not like they're wonderful, excellent, well paid jobs with great conditions that American workers are like, you know what? I don't want it. It's Their horrible, horrible jobs that they're bringing these immigrants into anyways. So this older kind of form of working class activism represented by people like Chavez has to be purged, has to be purged and our memory of it has to be cleansed. So that it was all just this horrible sexist, racist thing that we've all moved past now. And we understand that really the movement has always been about inclusion and safety and that's all it's ever going to be about. As opposed to. What was really powerful about these movements is that they were about working class solidarity, the ability of the working class to self govern and to be the, to be the future of the world. Not sad little vulnerable subjects that require endless checklists to know how to tie their shoes or whatever it might be. But that is, you know, that, that, that one little comment that that woman made made me realize. Oh yeah, yeah, everything that was actually powerful that protected the interests of the working class. Let's just forget about that. Actually what was important that we should all bow our heads and remember is the sexism and the immigration and the anti immigration. These were all terrible mistakes and we know better now.
- [41:59]
A
Yeah. And you know, I don't want to. I suppose one way to think about this without wanting to make it seem too schematic is it's like so many things that come out of the high point of, let's say, the sort of New Deal order, America that had a strong labor movement and achieved various remarkable forms of progress. You can clearly point back to it and find ways in which this whole system contained all kinds of opportunities for unaccountable abuse, abuse of power and so on. And it's very, it's very unfortunately easy to find examples of this. And I'd say the Chavez revelations are one of the most shocking, although it's, it's also quite shocking, I think, that these stories were clearly kind of concertedly kept under wraps for quite a long time because of their political inconvenience. And so there's some way in which the complicity in covering them up extended to many of the people, including people who are now describing themselves as victims, you know, had interests that led them to, to perpetuate this cover up. And so obviously, I'd say the, the problem with this sort of new accountability is that as you're suggesting, I think it does this kind of ideological work potentially of, you know, essentially discarding all aspects of, of what, you know, these movements and political figures achieved back in that period. And so, yeah, it's, it's sort of it's sort of a concerning thing. I mean, I, I also, I'm in the middle of editing something which is not even primarily about this, but it has an interesting passage which people can look out for this in compact in the coming weeks. But it has an interesting passage about the removal of a name from an institution in England which is the name of William Gladstone, the multiple term prime minister and sort of towering figure of liberal politics in the 19th century. And he was replaced with. His name was replaced with that of black communist activist. This is a building in Liverpool named Delore. Sorry, Dorothy Kuya. And the point that the author makes about this is that, you know, first of all, there's something slight. I mean, more so than the current whitewashing of things that were named after Chavez. Like there's something quite absurd about this because the main justification for it is the Gladstone not himself, but Gladstone's ancestors own slaves. So in other words, he did not himself and was, you know, generally quite a sort of progressive figure in relation to all manner of things, but his ancestors owned slaves, so he was tainted by that fact. But the point the author makes is that, you know, this change also it changes the type of person who's being foregrounded and privileged. Gladstone was somebody who exercised, who actually exercised power, had a great deal of influence and through that, we could argue was sort of compromised in various ways. But nonetheless he took on the responsibility of actually exercising power. And the person whose name was placed there instead was essentially a kind of. Essentially a kind of activist and sort of opposite, you know, permanently oppositional figure who never actually sort of occupied any significant position of power. And so there's something about that that, that seems important. And I think that's, that's maybe also true here in that, you know, Chavez was somebody who, whatever kind of awful things he got up to in his private life, he did actually put himself out there and, you know, take huge risks and sort of attempt to accomplish important things. And it seems like in a certain sense our, our current dispensation is leaning more towards people who, you know, are kind of pure in their opposition to all power, although, you know, they may also be exercising certain kinds of power as well. But, you know, this, I think sets us up for a situation in which politics is conceived of in a very different way than these people did in the past. And I guess goes back to our point about sort of the rule of NGOs and stuff like that in the, in the previous segment. So speaking of NGOs, I suppose the Girl Guides are an NGO. I'm not sure exactly what kind of organization they are, but I assume they qualifies an ngo.
- [47:30]
B
In any case, there's been a court kind of.
- [47:33]
A
So. Okay. I assume so.
- [47:37]
B
But that's what. That's why they've made this decision.
- [47:40]
A
Yeah, yeah. In the U.S. we, we, we. We do call that an NGO. I was gonna ask, were you ever a Girl Guide yourself?
- [47:49]
B
I was not.
- [47:50]
A
My daughters, I'm not sure what you have in Canada.
- [47:53]
B
I was never a Girl Guide. My daughters are Girl Guides in Greece. But I was never a Girl Guide. I was very jealous of everybody who was. I was the third child born, and by the time my parents got to me, was a lot less impetus to sign me up for things, I think.
- [48:11]
A
So, yeah.
- [48:13]
B
Yeah. I watched these things from afar.
- [48:17]
A
I was in the Cub Scouts and then briefly in the Boy Scouts, but because I was sort of an anti establishment type, I decided the Boy Scouts was too militaristic, and so I quit. And it's interesting, there was a lot of controversy kind of starting in that era, but I feel like it was one of those defining kind of culture war controversies of the 90s was about gay Boy Scouts and whether there could, you know, like, whether you could be a gay Boy Scout. So there were some court cases about that. In any case, that was the last time I kind of thought about culture wars and Scouting. But you have brought to my attention in the British context, a new episode thereof.
- [49:02]
B
Yeah, it is, it's interesting. It is definitely the side of these kinds of culture wars that get played out over and over. And I'm quite sure there's some sociological book I haven't read that is all about this, but I found it interesting. So the Girl Guides has said that trans identified boys. So that's trans what. What the. The kids called trans girls have until September to leave the organization. And from this. But already, from this point on, there's no. There are to be no. No boys in. In Girl Guides. So the association, which is called the Guide Associate association, has said that trans transgender girls. So trans identified boys have until September to leave the organization. And already any new signups can only be biological girls. And the reason is because the Supreme Court ruled some time ago, actually that woman in the context of the law means adult human females, biological women. And so the. They are saying they are still standing with the LGBTQ community, but they are following the. The rules and therefore saying that they can't accept transgender children anymore. So they said we must operate lawfully and follow Our governing charity documents which affect how our membership eligibility is defined. So because they're a charity, they're saying they have to. They kind of have to do this. So it seems like they've been sort of drag, kicking and screaming into this. Now, this kind of The. The reason why I found this story interesting is because it. I have thought many times over that the trans movement utterly shot itself in the foot by taking the most extreme demand as the. The frontline demand, which is that when you identify as the opposite sex, you are literally the opposite sex for all intents and purposes. And. But most people were on board with. And had been on board with. Maybe not most. It could have been more, perhaps the idea that if you want to dress up and attempt to pass as the opposite sex, then that's fine, but if you were found out as actually not a man or actually not a woman, it would be good if people didn't ridicule you for that or embarrass you. So, oh, we found out that Judy used to be Joe. Well, perhaps a progressive person would be like, oh, well, that's okay, I'll call that person Judy. But if, If Judy decided that they wanted to race in the Olympics against women, then we would be like, no, Joe, that's. You look like a woman. Kudos to you, but you're not actually a woman. That's crazy. And that was kind of the point. Like, that was fine. Like, that most people were like, that's the line that. So when. When the transgender movement piggybacked on the success of the gay rights movement and the, the very new kind of success and the high of. Of gay marriage, that is what most people thought it was. They thought it was like, oh, yeah, more acceptance for like, this other kind of gay. That's cool. Yeah, I don't have a problem with that. I don't think enough people realize that what was being demanded is that you literally would become the opposite sex for all intents and purposes, regardless of whether or not you actually passed. And in fact, passing was seen as a form of oppression because this was always the difficulty that you would. You would be accepted in society if you pass as the opposite sex, but if you didn't, you wouldn't be. And, like, they might have, you know, campaigned like, hey, don't be mean to and harass people who aren't passing. That's probably fine. Or maybe we could have another. There would still be all kinds of problems. Like, maybe we would need another space because, you know, maybe men can't be trusted in private places with trans women, maybe there'd be a discussion about that. But the kind of like the absolute terrifying literalness of the whole movement is what I think did it in. And it did it in. In terms of like, of Girl Guides as well and these. And Boy Scouts and all these sorts of things. So it was like there was always like, they were the center of a culture wars kind of thing for a long time. Because it was like, well, I'm a girl. What if I want to be a Boy Scout, right? And I'm a boy. What if I want to be a Girl Guide? And then it was like, no, I am literally actually a girl. Which took it another step. Because at least if we had. If people had won that conversation, which they kind of did for some time, but around, you know, if you are a boy and you prefer forms of female socialization, why should you not be in. Be able to be part of the Girl Scouts? Then you would make accommodations for the fact that boys are in the Girl Scouts now. You know, you wouldn't force girls to pretend that the boy was actually a girl, which created all kinds of safeguarding problems and discomfort, extraordinary discomfort for the people involved. You could just be like, yeah, this boy is very effeminate and prefers girl socialization. And we can be like, okay, we'll include boys. If that was like, if, if that was the decision that was made. Or we could have a conversation about, well, maybe we should have another organization that is quite similar. But is mixed sex, something like that. But instead it went like whole hog and was like, no, you have to accept that this is actually a girl and you must treat this person actually as a girl. And this is how what's happened in a huge range of institutions that caused all the problems, because I don't want to undress in front of a man. I don't have to. I don't want to have to pretend that the penis isn't actually there. Like, you know, it was a female penis or whatever in this particular instance. But you're like forcing people, especially girls, to be like, oh, you're supposed to be nice and pretend. So we're all just going to be nice and pretend. So that opened this horrible, this huge can of worms and what created a lot of the backlash. And I just don't understand, like, why we couldn't. And it seemed for a long time that we were on that path as a society where we were like, you can get. Be rough and tumble as a girl. That's cool. You can be an effeminate. Boy, that's fine. And we shouldn't bully you for that. And then it was like, no, if you're an effeminate boy, I'm gonna put a dress on you and I'm gonna call you Sally now. You're Sally now? Like, what. What happened there? And I think, you know, the. The girl guides had to go down and take the hard line of, like, no, only biological sex. We can't really have that conversation about, like, maybe mix sex. As it happens, I don't think it's a good idea to mix sex in girl Guides. I think you do need, like, boy scouts, Girl Guides. You need, like, places of female and male socialization, and that's good for people. And you need mixed sex spaces as well. But you can't even have that conversation because the. The hard line was the one that was the only one that you could possibly take. And if you didn't, you got, like, kicked out of public life. Like, that was never going to stand. And now you. We can't even do that at all.
- [56:22]
A
So with that, we will bring things to a close. Thank you, Ashley. And for more, Please go to compactmag.com subscribe to read everything we publish until next week.
- [57:00]
B
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