Earlier this month, CNN White House correspondent, John Harwood, called Donald Trump a “dishonest demagogue” while on the air. In short order, his employer showed him the door, citing a need for the press to maintain political neutrality in its reportage.
A day later, the CBC reported that Adrian Monck, an official from the World Economic Forum, was decrying the fact that Canada has become a hotbed for WEF-related conspiracy theories. As the article proceeds, it becomes apparent that it isn’t Canada but its Conservative Party that has become the hotbed for WEF-related conspiracy theories. Even its presumptive leader, Pierre Poilievre, promotes such views notwithstanding the fact that his predecessor, Stephen Harper (who has endorsed Mr. PP), personally regards the WEF as a valuable resource. In response to this apparent cognitive dissonance, Monck offers this: “I don’t know where he [Poilievre] differs in his analysis from, say, Stephen Harper. We’re not an advocate on behalf of any particular political viewpoint. We try and remain impartial and neutral.”
Two days after that, we have Charles Kaiser’s review of The Destructionists, a newly published account of the Republican Party’s implosion penned by Washington Post columnist, Dana Milbank. The piece opens with: “After Joe Biden’s fiery speech in defense of democracy last week, most of the Washington press corps responded with another stream of fatuous false equivalencies.” Not Milbank, who says point blank: “Republicans have become an authoritarian faction fighting democracy.”
These three pieces are variations on a theme: center-left politics is supposed to make nice, reach for bipartisan solutions, find ways to accommodate the opposition; similarly, the press is expected to give equal weight to opposing views in the name of impartial reportage. This theme has its roots in Hegelian dialectics and plays out in many of our fundamental institutions. The adversarial model, for example, rests on the belief that when fervently opposed parties clash in a courtroom, that will assist the court in finding the truth so that it can offer just outcomes. Popular culture entrenches this view through countless police procedurals and courtroom dramas until we can’t imagine social arrangements that don’t follow this model.
The problem with appeals to Hegelian dialectics as a guide for conduct in the political arena is that, in the contemporary setting, one of the political views gaining traction in the popular imagination happens to have been co-opted by people who are hateful and, at least in some instances, insane. Meanwhile, the center-left has fallen into the trap of mistaking process for substance. Rather than cleaving to an ideological position, it quavers like a reed in the wind and wonders why everyone can’t just get along. But in the contest for power, the right has no intention of playing by traditional rules, or any other rules for that matter. We should amend the saying “All’s fair in love and war” to include politics.
Enter Luke Savage, whose interest lies not in the behaviour of “dishonest demagogues” (which, to be blunt, is low hanging fruit) but in the behaviour of seemingly more credible figures of the center-left, like Barack Obama and Justin Trudeau. Both are creatures of the neoliberal machine. Like Clinton before them, they deploy the rhetoric of the center-left, and carry themselves with an almost messianic charisma that promises hope and change, but are so heavily invested in the givenness of contemporary global economic structures, the best they can do is offer more of the same. In his review of Obama’s memoir, The Promised Land, Savage observes that “[It] showcases his masterful ability to speak the language of conservatism in the register of idealism and progress.” And later: “Obama’s tendency to invoke grand, dialectical oppositions then resolve them with abstract appeals to unity or similitude has been a hallmark of his style.”
Moving on to Trudeau: ”As with Obama, Trudeau’s meticulously groomed, post-political brand is pure artifice: a place where the professionalized, marketing-obsessed business of modern campaigning converges with contemporary culture’s preference for the personal over the political in elevating form over content.” I don’t think Savage goes far enough. As regards Trudeau, it’s not a matter of form over content; there simply is no content. One need only examine the record of the Trudeau liberals to hear the echo of the empty tin can clatter. In 2015, Trudeau campaigned on a promise to abolish the first-past-the-post electoral system. On winning the election, he shelved the idea and we’ve heard not a peep since. At the same time, he promised to improve not just relations but living conditions of Canada’s First Nations Peoples. Eleven days after Trudeau assumed office, Murray Sinclair delivered his completed Truth and Reconciliation Commission report. Years later, even as Indigenous communities locate and exhume the bodies of their children, the federal government has yet to act on the report’s recommendations. In this instance, the disconnect between promises and action is mind-boggling. In the same way, the liberal government routinely makes grandiose commitments to climate action yet has simultaneously approved and helped subsidize two major oil pipeline projects. Meanwhile, the major oil companies continue to enjoy support from the federal government for their projects in the world’s filthiest oil reserves.
Luke Savage doesn’t restrict his view to the most obvious players. He provides useful case studies of candidates for the 2020 Democratic Party primaries which he calls “an extended meditation on the true meaning of emptiness.” There’s Beto O’Rourke and Pete Buttigieg, and Joe Biden of course, “all different reflections of the same, largely postpolitical strand of liberalism, one that has so thoroughly acceded to the logic of the market that it no longer recognizes the difference between branding and campaigning….” He offers a portrait, too, of Amy Klobuchar, who tried to make herself more appealing by rejecting ambitious and popular policies. He sets these against the potential leaders—Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren—who might actually make the Democrats ideologically distinguishable from the Republicans. But no. As the Sanders-bashers remind us again and again, idealism and socially progressive projects are for children and beret-wearing undergraduates; only the grownups get through the door here. As understood here, grownups have the advantage of working without the burden of imagination.
As if to provide further evidence for Luke Savage’s claim, MPs from Canada’s Liberal Party started flailing in response to the appointment of Pierre Poilievre as leader of the Conservative Party. The headline from a CBC article dated September 12th says it all: “With Poilievre’s victory, some Liberal MPs hope party will pivot to the centre.” Deeper in the article, we get a couple anonymous quotes:
“We must return to a federal centre, centre-right party,” said another MP, also on the condition they not be identified. “We need a government that is down to earth and less woke.”
“Poilievre’s party can’t fill the centre,” said another.
As with the Democratic primaries, so these Liberal MPs offer us an abbreviated reflection on the true meaning of emptiness. Their statements are laughable. First, the man who has aligned himself with the QAnon-fueled Freedom Convoy is not about to occupy the centre any time soon. And second, to suggest that the Liberals are “woke” because they acceded to an NDP demand for socialized dental care ignores the fact that they didn’t do this for ideological reasons, but simply to stay in power. Like the anonymous MPs, the Liberal party has no particular convictions and is willing to position itself just about anywhere on the political spectrum to secure another term. There is nothing of substance at play here.
When a progressive-minded critic like Luke Savage savages the center-left, it is customary for well-meaning onlookers to complain that this sort in-fighting only hurts the cause by dividing the left and creating more space in the field for the right to succeed. Do I really need to point out that this form of criticism is classic gaslighting? Luke Savage’s critique didn’t produce the conditions that have produced a centrist liberalism without conviction. Fortunately, Canada isn’t stuck with a bipartite political structure and has other options. The danger, however, is that the NDP might easily succumb to the same vapid politics as its Liberal and Conservative counterparts.