“The government lies to us, we all know it. The media lies to us.”
“My mission over the next 18 months of this campaign and throughout my presidency will be to end the corrupt merger of state and corporate power that is threatening now to impose a new kind of corporate feudalism in our country.”
~ Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Democratic son of assassinated Democratic Robert F. Kennedy, is out on the stump for his presidential campaign in challenging President Joe Biden. He is beating the populist drum, but he is no newcomer to this. What some might not be used to hearing is this kind of populism in the Democratic Party and coming from a member of a political dynasty, since so long ago the neoliberal DNC elites betrayed the working class and sold their souls to big biz interests. Yet populism, in its mercuriality, has a way of coming from all directions, constantly shifting forms, and soaking into everything.
It’s not quite guaranteed that Republicans will become the new populist party, in this new populist era. Along with RFK Jr., many Democrats are making a run for it: Bernie Sanders, Andrew Yang, Marianne Williamson, etc; with much earlier precedents such as George McGovern, Jesse Jackson, Ralph Nader, and many others. But the powers that be have, until recently, kept populists down (Matt Stoller, How Democrats Killed Their Populist Soul), as they’ve done with leftists. Also, though progressives have typically opposed populists (Bill Schneider, Class warfare fractures both parties), one can sense that the line between the two is presently blurred, maybe disappearing entirely; as leftward public opinion indicates. Populists have lit a fire under progressives’ asses.
Populism is often a strange mix of fears and hopes. RFK Jr. is an environmental lawyer with a platform of civil liberties, anti-corruption, transparency in government, opposition to military-industrial complex, anti-corporatism/fascism, and economic revitalization, but he is also an anti-vaxxer, the latter more often associated with the alt-right. It reminds one of how Donald Trump made progressive-like campaign promises about infrastructure rebuilding, healthcare reform, fighting corruption, etc, albeit all bull shit; and now is campaigning on protecting Social Security and Medicare, further bull shit. As with progressivism, populism is in the air, and has been for a while now. An old creed of populism has always been a distrust of elites, going back to ancient slave revolts and medieval peasants revolts, then reawakening in the modern era of revolutions and mass movements.
On that note, RFK Jr. has resurrected the conspiracy theories about the supposed CIA’s assassination of his father Robert F. Kennedy and his uncle John F. Kennedy. Even as the accumulated evidence does get one thinking, it’s not verified if CIA agents or other government officials assassinated or were involved in the assassinations; though the government apparently was involved in its coverup for some motive or another. For example, in response to questions and criticisms following the Warren Commission Report, a 1967 CIA memo directed agents to deceptively push ‘conspiracy theorist’ accusations through assets in the US mainstream media; and data analysis shows that the use of the label ‘conspiracy theorist’, that had been rare in the MSM up to that point, suddenly was widely used following. That illegally propagandistic attempt to hide and obscure the truth from the public provides supporting evidence for a potential link of the CIA to the assassination itself, but it doesn’t prove it and at this point, barring further leaks or a death bed confession, we’ll likely never know.
But what is proven beyond a doubt, according to released and leaked CIA documents and assorted other evidence, is that for generations the CIA has assassinated numerous democratic leaders around the world, along with having overthrown democratic governments and attacked democratic groups and movements; in concert with persecution and oppression of the left in general. This is similar to it being proven, according to released and leaked FBI groups, that the FBI used COINTELPRO tactics to attack, weaken, and destroy democratic groups in the US, including actions that involved a FBI asset and led to the assassination of Black Panther leader Fred Hampton by the police that the FBI was working with, but also including other devious ploys like the attempt to blackmail Martin Luther King Jr. into suicide. That is some fucked up shit that most Americans remain unaware or disinformed about, as they’re not going to learn about it by attending school, public or private, or by listening to corporate media, including so-called public media largely funded by corporations.
If our government has done all of this and worse in other countries and here at home, what would stop them from assassinating a standing U.S. president? Certainly, neither morality nor law has been a significant hindrance so far in their covert activities. So, it’s easy to be suspicious when the intelligence agencies of one’s own government have a known long history of political evil, violence, brutality, terrorism, and oppression; even when knowledge of this remains an open secret amidst mass ignorance and indoctrination, causing a sense of free floating anxiety and vague paranoia among the masses. Nonetheless, like Robert Kennedy Jr., many other Americans are becoming less ignorant about abusive corruption and less forgiving toward the purveyors of it (e.g., according to polls, most Americans acknowledge that racism is systemic among police departments and requires reform). That is part of why there has been decades of falling public trust in all major institutions (big government, big media, big biz, and big church; and now the military as well), a situation that is fomenting populist unrest and outrage. It obviously has nothing to do with partisan politics. Many of the same people who voted for Barack Obama stated they would’ve voted for Bernie Sanders, did vote for Donald Trump, and likely would vote for Robert Kennedy Jr.
The argument has been made that, given the admission in polls that many Trump voters said that they didn’t trust Trump to do what he promised, it seems that electing Trump was more of a ‘Fuck You’ to the entire political system; a desperate sense of frustration among a certain segment of the disempowered, disenfranchised, and dispossessed; the equivalent of throwing a grenade into a bunker (the Joker’s philosophy that, in chaos, there is equality). While distorted and misguided by dark fantasies of paranoia, hatred, and bigotry, there was a valid sense of protest, if only a kernel, even in the January 6 MAGA insurrection. With populism repeatedly sprouting up within the Democratic Party as well, this animosity can’t be blamed on just the far right and the politically disaffected. While most Americans have lost trust in major institutions, they also state in polls that they still support the ideal of good governance and want a strong and active government that supports democracy and the public good. For all the moral failure and political evil, the American public hasn’t merely fallen into cynicism, passivity, and indifference. Hence, the reason populism retains its ever stronger appeal, across party lines.
What this anti-elitism and anti-corruption ultimately comes down to is an opposition to high inequality. Such disparity is more of power, position, and privilege than only income and accumulated wealth. This is where it’s important to make a distinction between right-wing authoritarianism (RWA) and social dominance orientation (SDO). RWAs aren’t inherently inegalitarian, per se; that is to say not necessarily pro-inequality, in some ways quite the opposite. But that is the case among SDOs, specifically SDO-Es on the SDO-7 subscale. RWAs just want everyone within a given population to conform to the same norms and so in a sense equalize everyone, if inconsistent and hypocritical in practice; whereas SDOs don’t want people to conform at all but, rather, to be kept in their place. In studies, it’s demonstrated that SDOs seek out inequality and, when it’s lacking, will strive to create it. SDOs love rigid hierarchy where power is elevated, concentrated, and centralized within an elite; and hence the subordination and subjugation, suppression and silencing of the masses, the denial of autonomy and agency (i.e., democratic self-governance).
The US has the highest inequality in the world, at a time of the highest inequality in world history. It’s an social dominance utopia, which means a dystopia for the rest of us. Most Americans don’t accept this, even as they are largely ignorant of how bad it is. In surveys, most Americans severely underestimate how vast is inequality. Yet actual inequality is so far above what most Americans, when asked, state is tolerable. Imagine the populist outrage once Americans realize the full extent of the propaganda, indoctrination, and disinfo used to keep them in the dark. And place that in context of the American majority’s ignorance about being a left-liberal majority that is manipulatively divided, another truth that is slowly trickling out into public knowledge, though not yet forming as a shared public identity. If not fully informed, most Americans do get the gist of it. They grok the basic problem and support the policies that would solve it, such as greater democracy, universal healthcare, higher taxes on the rich, stronger corporate regulations, etc. Americans have repeatedly demanded this, as seen with Bernie Sanders having been the most popular candidate in 2016, whereas both Hilary Clinton and Donald Trump were the least popular since data was kept, but the elite repeatedly won’t allow majority leftist opinion to be heard or genuine populism to take hold, much less to gain entry into power.
Here is an important point of confusion. The thing is SDO is divided into two facets, that measure distinct and so can be separate in any given individual. Besides SDO-E (inegalitarianism), there is also SDO-D (dominance proper). The latter is about old school bigotry and oppression, with caste systems, ghettos, sundown towns, redlining, apartheid, a permanent underclass, class war, and such; but old school social dominance is politically incorrect at this point and less of a direct threat, though far from gone. So, authoritarians may or may not have high levels of SDO-D dominance tendencies, whether or not they’re high in SDO-E inegalitarianism. For example, when researched, authoritarians overall don’t perceive immigrants and foreigners as a threat, as long as they are portrayed as assimilating. But to SDOs, assimilation of the foreign is to be feared because it undermines the established hierarchical boundaries of division. So, while conservative Republican partisans indeed have higher rates of authoritarianism, it is primarily SDOs, if with the help of authoritarians, that rule the two-party state, which of course includes the corruption of the transpartisan and cross-administration deep state (CIA, FBI, Homeland Security, etc). This is how occasional token minorities and poor individuals can become politicians, presidents, administration figures, Supreme Court judges, intelligence agents, etc; while oppression of the masses remains, actual meritocracy is neutralized, and the banana republic goes on.
Populism, at its heart, is the simple insistence that it doesn’t have to be this way, that something better is possible, must be possible. Now whether populism takes beneficial or harmful form is dependent on how much pushback the elite give it, and dependent on which counter-elites, reformers and revolutionaries or demagogues and reactionaries, will put their support behind it. It’s a powerful force, but disgruntled populists can get lost down dark paths, just as optimistic populists can lead us toward a brighter future. What determines the outcome is not only what the public demands but also what the elite allows, and as well what the rest of us choose, either for or against the public good. To attack populists as mere right-wing reactionaries and useful idiots would only be to harm ourselves, would be to deny that we too are of the people and that we too share the same fate. Never doubt populism is always a movement of hope. Let us maintain that. Populism is a movement of the populace, of the people. And we, all of us, are the people. It’s for us to decide what becomes of it, what becomes of the possibility for freedom and betterment.
Marmalade 