[TLDR (too long didn’t read): If you are reading this, chances are it behooves you. This Reader is about the Left (and not so Left), the Right (and too far Right) and the Center (and too ‘extreme center’) and why the future remains political for our struggle for HR. For a quick overview, just read the bolded text]. Traducir/traduire los/les Readers; usar/utiliser deepl.com
—From out there on the moon, international politics look so petty. You want to grab a politician by the scruff of the neck and drag him a quarter of a million miles out and say, ‘Look at that, you son of a bitch.’ (Edgar Mitchell, Apollo 14 astronaut)
–Back to earth though, the future remains political and choosing not to question power is itself a political choice. (IARAN, Inter-Agency Research and Analysis Network) But the choices may be limited and pursuing any of them entails risks. As my friend Louis Casado said: “You have to be really pissed to prefer cancer over the plague”.
A birds-eye view of the political spectrum
A. Beware: Social democracy was never a form of ‘civilixed socialism’
–The so-called democratic socialism is neither one nor the other: it condemns neoliberal measures, yet implements them with the results we see today. (L. Casado)
–Yes, in social-democratic regimes there is a certain order in chaos, an appearance of the government being prestigious, figuratively humanistic and respectful of the law and the constitution. (Luis M. Arce Isaac)
1. For social democrats, economics way too often took/takes precedence over political freedoms and human rights (HR). The corollary was/is that those rendered poor (or ‘the indigent’) could/can never be politically free. For social democrats, political equality has always been supposed to be arrived-at by keeping the citizenship passive and letting HR be fulfilled as seen and understood by the state (“It is the state that is to be the provider and defender of these rights, not the citizenry”, they claim –so, they get away with washing their hands). A passive citizenship is thus deemed to be a necessary political condition for the existence of social democracy. It is with this understanding that states ratified UN HR conventions! (Michael Neocosmos)
2. “The masses do not retreat into the void, but into bad, yet familiar territory”. This phrase was written more than 50 years ago, in a very different context, by Argentine journalist and activist Rodolfo Walsh. This is why their demands (on the economy and on public safety) stay minimal and have been the determining factor in so many elections around the world. In a déjà vu, the social democratic, watered-down and timid progressivism that stems from this has, over-and-over, opened the doors to reactionary forces.
B. For the Left, the task at hand is thus puzzling
3. Many in the Left are trapped in a partial Marxist ideology that may offer a correct analytical tool of the fallacies of Capitalism, but offers no concrete strategy. That is not real Marxism. “We want to put an end to Capitalism”. Yes, but how and where to start? And how does one get people to join the cause when the right-wing media has spent years delegitimizing all concepts of Marxism and Socialism?* Is it productive enough to keep arguing in favor of ‘taking control of the means of production’ or to make the point about the alienation of society…? (Francine Mestrum)
*: On the rare occasions when I try to explain to someone who challenges me, what I would require of Socialism, it is (perhaps naively and simplistically) that any sector of our lives that relates to a HR, food, shelter, work, health and health care, education, a safe environment, etc, must be at the very least regulated by the public sector, if not completely managed and financed by the public sector. (Alison Katz)
4. Look at it from another angle: Today, in the midst of a full-scale offensive by the most reactionary and subservient right wing (intellectual, media-driven and military), progressivism (a segment of the Left) is attempting to find its way-out of this labyrinth by reshaping its discourse and methods of action. This, at a time when the political arena has been occupied by conservative forces and a consumerist economy. Progressivism has been fading into the background thanks to leaders that failed (or did not even attempt) to implement changes that would benefit the vast majority.
5. Some of these ‘progressive’ governments focus more on defending past achievements than on deepening reforms and building for a different future. This has led to an uncritical defense of the state without discussing what kind of state is needed to address current crises. We must acknowledge the governmental weakness of nearly all recent progressive governments that has left their countries with minimal economic growth and high levels of social discontent; with leaders who won elections but, once in power, very quickly lost popular support.
6. The key to the crisis of progressivism may lie in its very origins: it came to be as an ‘emergency way out’ in response to the crisis of existing political systems, resulting from the exhaustion of the neoliberal project and the challenge posed by popular protests. (Aram Aharonian)
Is what we are seeing in the Left a defeat or rather a failure? And who are the end losers?
–These are the big questions that every analyst must ask him/herself when faced with the global political setback of the magnitude we have today.
7. When the Left is defeated, the enemy from the Right imposes its overwhelming economic, social, media, geopolitical and/or military superiority. On the other hand, the Left often fails due to internal factors within the itself; these prevail and come to the fore (i.e., through internal contradictions, unforeseen errors, ideological inconsistencies, a lack of leadership or a lack of strategy and of perspective). What we have seen is not a defeat, but rather a long-standing failure of an institutionalist and elitist Left, more liberal than progressive that, after many setbacks and the defeat of many of their ‘substantial’ reform proposals, decided to abandon all reformist banners and to co-govern with sectors of the Establishment.**
**: But to make matters worse, the exasperating gradualism applied by the Left did produce legal victories that were not implemented, in practice postponing them ‘until the coming year’ –i.e., a time that never came. Obviously, no one votes for a government because of its assumed future victories… (Lautaro Rivara)
8. –A Left that has lost its organic connections with the working classes in low-income communities, in urban peripheries and/or in neglected regions,
-A Left that that has squandered opportunities for democratic expansion,
-A Left that has viscerally distrusted spontaneous mobilization (and runs with the elites),
is a Left that has chosen to fear its people more than the legacy of tyrants. It would be a Left that has adopted an empty, formalistic, legalistic and insubstantial conception of democracy that excludes its social and economic foundations and base. (A. Aharonian)
C. The Far-right is increasingly occupying positions of power from which they push an agenda of barbarism, hatred and the prevalence of an imperial force over popular reason
—Pinochet came to power through a coup d’état, something that no longer seems necessary today. (F. Mestrum)
9. We can see an undisguised submission to the Far-right of the White House. Add to that:
- the surrender of natural resources to foreign capital owners,
- the establishment of police states under the pretext of security,
- the persecution of dissent,
- the systematic dismantling of political, civic, economic, social and cultural rights, and
- the effective replacement of democracy (however imperfect it may have been) with an exclusionary oligarchy of millionaires.
10. Let’s face it: The rise of authoritarian right-wing leaders worldwide is the result of an economic and political system of neoliberalism running out of steam and unable to tackle the crises of inequality, precarity, climate collapse and social anxiety that it has created. The global spread of authoritarian and Far-right leaders and movements reflects deeper failures of neoliberalism –ergo it is a system unable to address growing inequality, precarity, climate breakdown and social anxieties, that has created fertile ground for reactionary politics. (Miguel Urban Crespo)
D. The traditional Right has dropped its masks and renounced formal liberalism to blend–in with neo-fascist forces
—The hegemonic right-wing media have successfully imposed a view that stigmatizes as radical any popular attempt to ensure a fair access to healthcare, to education, to housing or to decent work.
11. Today, it seems that the younger generation, influenced by the consumer economy and the social media, fails to find political role models that defend a state that supports redistributive policies, human development, a sustainable environment and the human rights of minorities. (A. Aharonian)
Are elections being held in an environment without clear rules?
—When all is said and done, the issue in contention concerns the freedom to think. In electoral processes there is mostly no freedom of thought. There is only a freedom to hold opinions. This means the freedom to support those in power (in agreement with the government) or those in the opposition (unhappy with the government) and that is all. (A. Badiou)
12. In many countries, elections are no longer contested and decided solely at the ballot box. They are played out on screens, in forwarded audio clips and in social media content that circulates before it can be verified. Disinformation is not a glitch in the system; it is a standard campaign tool. And in this scenario, what is at stake is not just who wins or loses, but the conditions under which democracy functions –i.e., how people freely access information, freely form their opinions and freely participate in the public debate.
13. When we talk about electoral disinformation***, we are not referring solely to fake news. We are referring to a set of practices that seek to influence the electorate’s perception, sow doubt about democratic processes and/or discredit candidates and institutions. This ranges from fake polls and fabricated statements to coordinated harassment campaigns, from condoning human rights violations to content manipulation and the strategic use of emerging technologies such as AI or deepfakes –all this backed by big money. As has been repeatedly noted, the problem is not merely the existence of misleading content, but the ecosystem that enables its circulation and amplification. Recent presidential elections show that these dynamics are, not marginal, but structural –and all indications suggest they will be central to electoral processes from 2026 onward: money buys elections!
***: In recent years, disinformation has ceased to be a sporadic phenomenon and has become an integral part of campaign strategies: Digital disinformation is no longer a marginal issue, but a practice systematically deployed at critical moments in the electoral process. During these elections, it is easy to identify multiple instances of false or misleading content, including an unprecedented use of artificial intelligence tools. Patterns that repeat across different countries are also observed. The most frequent has been the circulation of false statements attributed to candidates or other public figures, strategically used to influence voting intentions. Second, fake polls stand out, used to shape perceptions about who is winning or losing in the race. This type of content does not circulate in isolation. Disinformation campaigns operate in a coordinated and cross-platform manner. A narrative may emerge on open platforms like TikTok or X, escalate rapidly, and then move to messaging apps like WhatsApp or Telegram where its circulation becomes harder to track or counter.
14. Finally here, among the various forms that electoral disinformation takes, one of the most persistent is the promotion of narratives of fraud. These narratives do not necessarily seek to demonstrate actual voting irregularities, but rather to instill a permanent suspicion regarding the legitimacy of the electoral process. (Catalina Balla)
Claudio Schuftan, Ho Chi Minh City
Your comments are welcome at schuftan@gmail.com
Postscript/Marginalia
–Today’s authoritarianism differs from its 20th century versions especially in its core mechanism for maintaining power. While the despots of the olden days relied on demagoguery****, on violence and fear to keep populaces in line, modern autocrats prefer ‘regulatory repression’. By manipulating electoral systems, the market, the judiciary, and the media, they assure electoral victory and render popular protest largely irrelevant. A cool-headed autocrat can ride out discontent, tweaking the regulatory gears as necessary to hold power. The lack of policy coherence is another character of authoritarianism. This incoherence (and incompetence) heightens public fears alienating supporters. Trumpism is a version of this project. In the short term, the threat is to democracy. But we only arrived at this situation, because too many of us/you fail to understand or care enough about human rights. Without a post-Trump plan for transitional justice, the US’s democracy may never again be secure. (Devon Kearney)
****: We are better off in the company of a dog we know than in the company of a man whose language we do not understand. (St. Augustine)
#HumanRightsReaders
#HumanRights
#ClaudioSchuftan