Yeah if you are trying to kick a reputation for being a porous-bordered hub for sex trafficking, arresting the famous guy going “ha ha I love to do sex trafficking in Romania” is basically the free square. Prob. a lot more to do w/Schengen area admission than pizza. https://t.co/KLvsE1fgX5
— A-100 gecs (@PinstripeBungle) December 30, 2022
Andrew Tate, ‘influencer’, seems to have made his fortune selling rape-culture fantasies and genuine pyramid schemes to teenage boys and other desperate incels. Given that, I assume he decided to ‘challenge’ Greta Thunberg as a can’t-lose publicity stunt — she’s a perpetual incel target, and for his social-media purposes even negative publicity would be ‘good’ publicity.
Turns out that’s not how his Romanian hosts understood the bargain, though!
Also – one of the reasons the Austrians list is that Romania is a hub of human trafficking. If Tate is involved in that – even on the periphery – it’s a huge headache for Iohannes and entire government.
— FischerKing (@FischerKing64) December 29, 2022
These are all guesses of course. But point is the easy USA conspiracy theories are also guesses, and quite a bit more stupid based on what we know.
— FischerKing (@FischerKing64) December 30, 2022
CNN:
Controversial internet personality Andrew Tate and his brother were ordered to be detained for a month on Friday as prosecutors pursued claims of human trafficking and rape.
Authorities in Romania said police served search warrants on Thursday at five homes and took four suspects into custody – two Britons and two Romanians – as part of the investigation.
Romania’s Directorate for Investigating Organized Crime and Terrorism (DIICOT) said the four suspects had been detained for an initial 24 hours. A Bucharest court accepted an application by DIICOT to hold Tate and his brother Tristan in custody for a further 30 days, their lawyer Eugen Vidineac said on Friday…
DIICOT alleged that the four suspects formed an organized criminal group that stretched from Romania to Britain and the United States, for the purpose of committing the crime of human trafficking.
The authorities allege that two of the suspects misled the victims “into believing that they intended to enter into a marriage/cohabitation relationship” while transporting victims to Romania and later sexually exploiting them with physical violence and coercion.
Authorities also said one of the suspects raped a victim on two separate occasions in March 2022. At least six victims were allegedly “sexually exploited by the organized criminal group,” the DIICOT statement said…
On Friday, Andrew Tate tweeted from his verified account, “The Matrix sent their agents.”
Andrew Tate, a former professional kickboxer, is known for his viral rants online about male dominance, female submission and wealth. He openly advocates violence against women, and had previously been banned from every major social media platform until Elon Musk reinstated his Twitter account after taking over the company…
There was speculation online that authorities were alerted to Tate’s presence in Romania by the appearance of a particular pizza box in one of the photos he posted in his spat with Thunberg.
But, according to Reuters, a spokesperson for DIICOT said the pizza boxes did not play a role in the detentions.
The ‘always recycle your pizza boxes’ story is now legend — in the sense of how people are liable to remember it. But even before the bust, bystanders on social media were speculating that a man whose fortune is tied up in flashy high-resale-value cars is a man with reason to avoid the staid forms of financial investing which involve keeping records for purposes of local taxation or international justice forums.
Incredible roast, and the 33 hypercars thing seems like some combination of being fake and Tate being a guy who can’t won’t use banks for his businesses https://t.co/mannyRKJzN
— Pomodoro (Dad Joke Era) (@ilpomodoro2) December 28, 2022
Turns out Andrew Tate is a literal sex trafficker under arrest as we speak and this raises the question of how Greta Thunberg can call herself an environmentalist or climate activist when she was out burning garbage in public just yesterday
— Shiv Ramdas Traing To Rite Buk (@nameshiv) December 29, 2022
As so many Free Market Absolutists have discovered before Tait, a government ‘flexible’ (weak) enough to ignore lawbreaking — even supposedly ‘victimless’ lawbreaking, like sex trafficking or tax fraud — is a government ‘flexible’ enough to crack down on mouthy outsiders when it’s necessary to protect the local authorities’ network of fixers, finders, and otherwise unemployable family members.
Shocked, shocked to discover that gambling is going on at this establishment!
The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must …
right-wingers have an image of human trafficking that comes from disney's pinnochio when the reality is andrew tate, a common pimp
— John Ganz (@lionel_trolling) December 31, 2022
There's more to be said about the toleration and overt admiration of criminality on the contemporary Right
— John Ganz (@lionel_trolling) December 31, 2022
wait until these guys find out who made the matrix pic.twitter.com/TQitx5XuS6
— slate (@PleaseBeGneiss) December 30, 2022
halloween party did I say halloween party why would I say hallowee- I mean that’s ridiculous nobody mentioned a hallo- ha ha ha uhhh anyway so if I do a racism now will everyone talk about that instead https://t.co/sE6vPo9KMU
— kilgore trout, death to putiner (@KT_So_It_Goes) January 1, 2023
In the replies to the tweets I’ve embedded here (I don’t intend to dig deeper into the Dork Web), Tate defenders seem to be running two-thirds A victim of the Deep State! and one-third Probably a CIA plant all along!
And then there’s the Zerohedge take:
If you've ever been to the Lipscani district of Bucharest and have two working eyes, you won't defend Andrew Tate (who I am certain was just the absolutely stupid face of the group he was involved in and not the actual power behind it) /1https://t.co/DDHPwlsf8X
— FbF (@FistedFoucault) December 31, 2022
(Just another victim of Tha Man, when you think about it, really.)
eclare
Staying up here because we have a tornado watch til 4 AM. We have tornado sirens if we get upgraded to a warning, but I doubt they would wake me up.
Aussie Sheila
Ganz is astute in noting the links between common criminals and fascists. Organised crime is invariably reactionary in politics, because violence and criminality attracts both the lumpen bourgeoisie, political nihilists and ordinary middle class normies who all straddle anti establishment politics, establishment horror at disorder and reactionary politics.
Police, law enforcement generally, and organised crime also have a lot in common with so called ‘normal bourgeois politics’. For each element, the maintenance of social order and hierarchy defends and extends their freedom of operation and belief in their own exceptionalism.
The failure to indict and prosecute serious criminals, including trump and like financial scofflaws in the past has come home to roost. The US elected an outright criminal as President in 2016, because outright criminals have been overlooked in favour of enforcing the law against the working and workless poor, as a political ‘hedge’ against the respectable, voting middle class. That is not to say the crime and disorder isn’t an important issue for working class communities.
It is. It’s just that it only receives attention to the extent it can be wielded as a cudgel against poor and defenceless communities. Career criminals and their enablers are parasites, chiefly on the working and workless poor. They suck both resources and energy from political communities.
It is a sign of a polity in social crisis and until the ‘activist’ class in the US deals with both, criminals will continue to be elected, the poor and defenceless will continue to be the body on whom these parasites feed.
The respectable middle class in the US needs to be a lot louder about law and order, imposed this time on financial, real estate and tax criminals, and less on people who jump turnstiles and camp out in the streets.
NotMax
@eclare
Hunker down safely.
eclare
@NotMax: Will do! I also need to reassure the dog when the thunder booms.
Mallard Filmore
For those with an interest in that football injury, here is a YouTube video:
https://youtu.be/64Igj554XaI
“Medical Doctor explains Damar Hamlin’s injury”
I did not see anything gross or out of the ordinary in the play.
Amir Khalid
I’m still not quite clear what this Andrew Tate person is.
eclare
@Amir Khalid: I just heard of him a few days ago.
RobertDSC-Mac Mini
I had the misfortune to come upon a clip of him beating one of his female companions while browsing on Reddit last week. Dude is pure filth.
Aussie Sheila
@eclare:
So did I. However a perusal of his yt vids, such as they were amplified made it clear. He is at best a misogynist A hole, using his ‘influence’ with impressionable and not very bright young males to build an on line presence. At worst, he is what is alleged. A pimp, rapist, criminal and part of an organised crime network. Allegedly.
I am glad he has been detained by Romanian authorities. Now let’s see if his alleged misdeeds get investigated, and if indictments proceed. He is typical of the fascist ‘hum’ of much of the on line energy directed to young males. It needs to be shut down asap.
eclare
@Aussie Sheila: From what I’ve read, his influence on younger guys is the most distressing part, so far. I guess we’ll see what Romania discovers regarding criminal activity. Yeah, absolute filth.
Aussie Sheila
@eclare: His influence on young males is not ‘accidental’ imo.
There is a wide and deep criminal and fascist effort to recruit young males in the Anglo sphere (I am unable to follow any other linguistic sphere with any competence), towards fascism and crime, which can be usefully melded in a hot mess of proud boys, oath keepers and even normie republican politics. The international Right are doing their best to revive the street politics and aesthetics of the 1920s and 30s.
The left and the centre left should be alert and alarmed, and find the wherewithal to recognise it and fight back. Pining for a normie ‘centre’ and the politics of ‘across the aisle’ will only embolden them.
That is not to say that normie politics aren’t important as a show of patriotic ‘solidarity’ a la Biden’s feints. But it should never be mistaken as a political strategy, let alone as a solution to the deep criminality (unrecognised as it is) of much of the political and economic elites in the US. And not just there.
The UK is a hot mess of corruption and political dysfunction. So goes polities where the vote is voluntary, and the system is ‘first past the post’.
Anne Laurie
Yeah, that’s basically why I do posts like this. It’s not so much the freak-show aesthetics, as the ugly political underpinnings.
As with so much else in politicals these days — we don’t want to ‘provide free publicity’ for the Trump clones / Proud Boys / Tucker Carlsons, but we do need to keep an eye on them!
Anyway
@Amir Khalid:
I too heard of him only after his virtual spat with Greta Thunberg was reported on BJ. It appears Tate is a social-media influencer with millions of followers esp young men and was banned off the bird site bcos he promotes violence against women.. Appears that he was under investigation by Romanian authorities for sex-trafficking. Blog fave ElMu reinstated his account and the timing of his arrest in Romania is a coincidence.
guachi
What’s the difference between Andrew and Tristan Tate and their followers?
Andrew and Tristan are in cells.
Their followers are incels.
Martin
So, Andrew Tate is part of what is referred to as the ‘manosphere’. Basically, a bunch of alt-right influencers that sell antifeminism. They can be pick up artists, incels, mens rights activists, etc. Tate is one of the more successful ones. Banned from most social media because of descriptions of violence against women, etc. These guys largely target young men, and usually run money-making schemes off the back of their ideas. They build an audience of millions of people and sell merchandise or books on how to pick up women, a lot of online courses through the usual schemes of hooking people into subscriptions and then delivering nothing (Trump University, for instance).
Tate has been one of the more problematic one because he has been really good at reaching kids still in school – young teens, etc. who then see this guy driving around in a Bugatti and buying into the idea that they too can be a rich dickhead by treating all the women around them (mom, sisters, teachers, etc.) like absolute dog shit.
Nobody believes this guy is innocent because he’s been selling the idea that women deserve to be trafficked for YEARS.
Aussie Sheila
@Anne Laurie: You do great work here and I love your posts and Water Girls’ posts.
I have spent 50 years working in union and Labor politics here at home and I recognise the stuff that is happening abroad, at least in the Anglo sphere. I learnt my practical politics from older lefties, anti fascists and ‘wobblie’ unionists.
I get what is happening both at home and in the US and the UK. Here, we have a voting system and structural advantages that can ‘block’ the reactionary right. For a start, not only are we highly urbanised, our electoral system awards seats in Parliament in accordance with the weight of the actual population. Voting is compulsory here, which means around 95% turnout/voting at federal elections.
In the US and UK neither position is the case. That is a problem in an environment where a highly active right wing is agitating and organising the lumpen bourgeoisie and its criminal underclass equivalent and enablers.
For the first time in my life I now take the danger of fascism seriously as a political project in major industrial countries. It doesn’t mean jackboots in the streets. It looks like Brexit, the disappointment following that foolishness, and it looks likes failure to hold people responsible for the attempted coup in the US responsible. I am sure that the Special Prosecutor appointed will do his best, but I am not confident in any indictment and prosecution of trump, and I am not confident that the comfortable middle class in the US are as outraged as they should be.
I never mistake on line chatter for the real world. In my opinion, this shocking event will be swept under the carpet as soon as bien pensant opinion can do it.
Most people, especially those that vote, either won’t care or will be glad the plotters got off, in the interests of ‘unity and comity’.
eclare
@Aussie Sheila: Once Brexit passed in 2016, I had a bad feeling that TFG definitely had a chance that November. What a year. Vlad got exactly what he wanted.
Betty Cracker
@Aussie Sheila:
One interpretation of Republican underperformance in the midterm election is that more people were aware of the danger than some of us thought. Another is that the fascists can prevail if they nominate candidates who don’t present as barking mad, e.g., Ron DeSantis instead of Kari Lake.
Baud
@Aussie Sheila:
The partisan divisions in the US aren’t really class based. We do slightly better among working class voters, but that’sore because of race than class.
Aussie Sheila
@eclare: Yep. I always thought that trump would win in 2016. I was obviously alone in online US forums, as well as in circles in my country that just love sucking up to US diplomatic and political operatives. And that includes many in the Australian Labor Party.
However in my political circles, there was a certainty that Clinton would fall short at the post. Not because she was especially bad, but because the kind of ‘know nothing ‘ populism that trump was selling always goes down well in a polity that is both disorganised and demoralised.
There is a real democratic deficit in the Anglo sphere, economic as well as political. I hope that the UK election in the next 18 months returns a labour government, and that they reform the voting system there from ‘first past the post’ to proportional representation. In the US I don’t know what will happen. Voting reform appears impossible because Democratic Senators believe a Senate rule is more important than political accountability and democratic rights for all.
I hope to live long enough to see these fascist scumbags kicked back underground where they belong for the next thousand years.
I do my best still where I live, but we are not a political island, and the rubbish percolating from abroad is washing up here at home, albeit with attenuated effect due to our electoral system.
Betty Cracker
@eclare: Hopefully the storm has cleared your area and you’re safe! We had a storm blow through here a couple of weeks ago that spawned lots of high wind along with tornado watches. So nerve-wracking!
Aussie Sheila
@Baud: That is a problem if you don’t mind my saying so.
If the US left can’t find the ability to organise a multi racial working class, I don’t know what to say. To base a working class politics on ‘race’ is very short sighted and foolish. A working class politics embraces the struggle for racial justice as a struggle for economic justice and vice versa.
The idea that poor whites are so racist that they can’t be organised in such a struggle is unbelievably bad politics. Just terrible.
Baud
@Aussie Sheila:
Terrible but true. So much so that some folks want to put racial justice on the back burner to try to win over white working class voters. But all that does is piss off the base and split the coalition.
Aussie Sheila
@eclare: Yes I get that the outcomes suited Putin, and I am sure Russian influence played a role in both.
However it would be a mistake imo to blame Russia for the dismal politics of the last decade. He had plenty of unasked assistance from our own oligarchs and political elites.
It is too easy to blame a justly maligned ‘foreigner’ for structural forces pushing politics and economics in a direction that plunders ordinary people.
eclare
@Betty Cracker: Looks like we have one more heavy band of rain to come, but hopefully that’s it. Just checked, tornado watch extended til 11 AM. Ugh.
Aussie Sheila
@Baud: I don’t know what that means. Can you give examples?
I have worked with US unionists in the past (20 years ago), and I never felt that racial justice was being sacrificed on behalf of white working class solidarity. Now I recognise that my experience was not at the workplace level, but I never saw a politics that glorified white working class members and activists above, or at the expense of black and brown activists and delegates.
Was I wrong, or are we talking about past electoral beefs between Sanders supporters and normie Democrats?
Because if we are, I think you are mistaking on line and normie democratic politics for what actually happens in organising efforts.
YMMV.
eclare
@Baud: So true.
James E Powell
@eclare:
Brexit to Trump did have echoes of Thatcher to Reagan.
Baud
@Aussie Sheila:
I’m talking about politics, not labor organizing, which I have little exposure to. Organizers by their nature would focus on more parochial economic interests, I would think. Many traditional trade unions have white members who vote their tribe, but I don’t think that’s something the organizers or union leadership promotes.
Aussie Sheila
@James E Powell: Thatcher to Reagan was neo liberalism on the march as post war Keynesian politics failed to meet the liberalisation of finance (Nixon abandoning Bretton Woods) and the stagflation induced by low productivity and a relatively strong working class able for a time, to resist wage reductions as a solution to the crisis.
That impass was quickly resolved in favour of capital. And here we are.
Fascism on the rise, racial electoral politics substituted for multi racial working class organising efforts, and blame for the whole mess laid on an ex KGB agent who is screwing his own polity in a manner that differs only in degree from what our own ruling class has done for last 40 years.
I hate Putin as much as the next democrat, but for Christ’s sake, can we just stop and look around at home and stop the ‘it’s all the russkies fault’ bs. He wouldn’t be half as successful if Anglo sphere liberals were even a bit more resourceful and wide eyed about the current political economy.
Aussie Sheila
@Baud: No it is not something that union organisers promote.
I don’t mean to be a pain, but I don’t think you know anything about industrial or union organising. I have never seen, ever, in my working life, racial divisions promoted or ignored in organising efforts. To the contrary actually. Especially in the US even 20 years ago. I don’t know what is wrong with the centre left in the US.
Forget Sanders and his supporters. Build a bridge and walk over it.
Unless you are able to organise, educate and mobilise the majority of the US working class you are not only endangering your own democracy, you are endangering the rest of the Anglo sphere democracies, such as they are.
Baud
@Aussie Sheila:
I don’t know much about labor organizers. But it’s hard to separate them from centre left people who purport to speak for them.
Actual organizers have a hard job, but for various reasons, their success so far has only been at the margins. And I don’t think it’s possible to completely separate organizing from the underlying political environment in which they operate.
Aussie Sheila
@Baud: The underlying political environment in which Labor organising occurs in the US includes a middle class that couldn’t give a fuck. Because where you live, the white middle class votes, and the black and brown and white working class struggle to get time off to attend long polling lines. Because the black and brown working class are more easily mobilised electorally than industrially, a lot of admirable effort is put in to get them to the polls.
However not much effort by the US middle class to ensure union rights for all and thereby make organising a multi racial organised working class an electoral force. That is a blind spot in the US and is costing you your democracy, and potentially everyone else’s.
prostratedragon
There is a long history in the U.S. of social policies being undermined by racism and periods of progress ended by it. Regarding labor specifically, the construction unions have long been and are still an example of some of the problems; e.g. here, here, or to some extent here.
prostratedragon
When I hear of romanticized gangsters, I think of the last minute or two of The Godfather, which for me says it all.
Baud
@Aussie Sheila:
The middle class is just as divided as the working class. And one class isn’t going to fight for another class’s rights, especially when the other class is divided itself.
rikyrah
@Aussie Sheila:
The large chunk of working class are non-White…and yet, they don’t fall for populist bullshyt.
Race is at the bottom of EVERYTHING in America.
Periodt.
Aussie Sheila
@prostratedragon: I don’t care about examples of reactionary Labor unions in the US. Do you think such unions don’t exist anywhere else? I am quite aware of the history of such unions in the US. Hell, I even was a part of groups that organised at various levels to try and reduce their political influence in your own peak councils.
My point is that US liberals fail to grasp the connection between reactionary politics and an unorganised, demoralised and powerless working class, of all skin colours.
I am also bemused by US liberals still using the term ‘race’ as a synonym for what is in fact a cast based system of labour extraction, which has been useful for exhorting moral outrage but less useful in ensuring dignity and respect for any working person, irrespective of their levels of melanin.
Baud
@Aussie Sheila:
Sorry, race and class might be intertwined, but race is not subordinate to class in the US.
ETA: Also too, the problem in the US is not “liberals.” (At least not the American definition of that term.)
Aussie Sheila
@rikyrah: Racially based divisions are certainly at the base of a lot of the US political woes. That is not the same as saying ‘race’ is the issue of all US democracy deficits.
Such divisions are not sui generis to the US. Unfortunately however the class that is politically active overall in the US has no skin in the game in ensuring that every working person is treated with dignity and respect. Moral outrage is no substitute for clear eyed organising with an eye to uniting as many as possible against those that benefit from perpetual division. It has been done before.
Why not try it again?
Gvg
@Aussie Sheila: Um, the unions have lost a LOT of power in the US, very gradually. They really aren’t very big in politics any more in many areas. They still hang on in some areas, which not coincidently are strong democratic leaning. But in my area, the south, they were never as strong and have lost ground due to racist motivated propaganda. The propaganda is not directly racist in itself. It is specifically anti Union. People around here, ordinary working class of all races, have grown up for the last couple of generations taught to equate unions with corruption and communism and laziness and thugs. They are the ones that would benefit from unions the most and they vote against unions and laws that would help labor rights pretty consistently. The reasons behind these propaganda campaigns are racism and deliberate playing of the poor whites against the black and other minority poor. Not allowing them to unite for labor rights and wage increases or safety rules. The rich whites and the reactionary racists fund it to keep power. Follow the money. It’s also been a problem that some of the union leaders have been shown to be pretty racist them selves in the past. Not always, but when they come from a racist area, well, you get some racists. Elected leaders have to be appealing to the voters in their area, and tend to be somewhat like them. That has changed but gradually. I still run into a lot of the unions are communism. Keep in mind we have a lot of immigration from South America and their refugees American children can really be phobic about socialism, even social security can be bad! And there are other people who remember corrupt union thugs which also were a real problem when I was a child.
I don’t know how to get union influence in my region but racism in the politics has always been here. It’s much more important than whatever the local union organizers are doing which I don’t even here about.
Unions are other regions of the country trying to inch their way down here.
Aussie Sheila
@Gvg: I get that and I understand the South has a particular history with respect to Labor organising and ‘race’. However from my point of view the two difficulties are one and the same. JimCrow was as much a herrenvolk industrial system as it was a ‘unique society’and like all such systems, ie South Africa, the racial violence was a labour suppression strategy as well as a social system uniquely suited to the extraction of value and the imposition of political and social deference.
The only way to confront such a system in a democracy, is front on, organising as many as possible against the particular forms that capital takes in that environment.
I know for a fact that US unions are trying to organise there. How much assistance do they get from the bien pensant liberal left in the US?
Oh, and by the way, I use the term ‘liberal’ deliberately in the US sense.
Where I live, Liberals are Conservatives, but liberals ensure that unions, while much weakened in the last 30 years, never want for political support , because real liberals know that without an organised working class, liberals cease to practically exist politically and effectively.
Birdie
@Aussie Sheila: As an Australian who has spent 20 years living in the US, I think you underestimate the importance of race in electoral decision making and in the historical operation of large parts of the US economy, especially in the US South.
Australia mostly wiped out its indigenous population, has never had to deal with a porous land border, didn’t engage in slavery (at least not officially and not on the scale that the US did), didn’t fight a civil war about slavery, and doesn’t have an economy that continues to rely on undocumented, underpaid (and non-voting) migrant work and prison labor. These are pretty crucial differences to recognise when understanding the factors driving votes.
It seems like you’re arguing that an racially neutral or race-positive economic justice argument will build an unbeatable multi-racial working class coalition. To me that is a wonderful theory but bears little relationship to reality.
Baud
@Aussie Sheila:
If labor thinks liberals in the American sense are the enemy, then they have already lost.
Birdie
@Aussie Sheila: also I think you are overestimating the power of the mythical “liberal”.
Look at actual voting patterns in the South. Conservatives have a super-majority of the white voting population, despite the fact that when voting on policy issues, it’s clear that voter policy positions are actually much more liberal. Why is that?
One hint at an answer is that until fairly recently, it was actually Democrats who were dominant in the South. Why? Because Democrats were historically the party of segregation and Jim Crow. There is a reason why Lee Atwater’s tactics worked and it has nothing to do with class division.
The mythical worker you imagine, who if only they heard the right economic messages would stop voting their tribe? I’m fine with making an effort but I’m not going to assume they’re a central focus for a winning coalition.
Betty Cracker
@Birdie: I agree, and moreover, IMO, ascribing political dysfunction in the U.S. to either race or class exclusively misses a huge part of the picture. You can argue that focusing on X more than Y is the most effective path to achieve common goals, but you’ve got to recognize the tradeoff, which is going to make one group or another unhappy.
Princess
@rikyrah: “Race is at the bottom of EVERYTHING in America.”
This.
And it is something outsiders to the US have a hard time understanding. It took me a decade of living here before I really started to get it
Aussie Sheila
@Birdie: I am quite aware of Australia’s treatment of indigenous people and the terrible outcomes for the people and their descendants. That is why I support both electoral solutions, such as the campaign to enshrine indigenous voices in the Constitution which is coming up for a vote this year, as well as past union campaigns to enshrine equal pay for equal work which were organised by indigenous workers, supported by unions who were in turn berated by Australian conservatives in the Liberal and National Parties.
I do not advocate for ‘race neutral’ organising or campaigning, whatever you think that is. But I am puzzled why you would think that an Australian unionist would not advocate for a united, emancipatory working class organising effort.
Perhaps you think such a thing undesirable on the merits, or do you think it impossible?
Either way, it is despicable and a mark of ‘know nothing’ liberalism to deny the importance and possibility of both. Go back to voting Liberal, and stop encouraging the worst of US moaning and groaning about the impossibility of organising a multi racial block, because ‘poor whites are all racist a holes, and only enlightened people like us know what is what.’
This is not only bad for the US. It will bite us on the bum as well.
One Nation ring a bell?
Birdie
@Birdie: and further to the point about “unions trying to organize and not being supported”. I married into a family that includes union members and non-union tradespeople (who would be union in an Australian context). Their anecdotal diagnosis for why unions are in decline: Because in the 90s and 2000s, unions consistently bargained to maintain the benefits for their existing older members at the expense of future employees who would not get the same pay structure and benefits.
Why? Who knows, but I would not be surprised if tribalism (i.e. increasing diversity in the younger cohort) was a factor in how those negotiations played out. In any case, there’s a lot of distrust today in the groups that would most directly benefit from a union. The “liberals” attitude is irrelevant.
Aussie Sheila
@Betty Cracker: I get what you are saying, but how is it that the US middle class can very properly wax indignant about voting rights, despite having a high tolerance for disgraceful efforts by Dem Senators like Manchin and Sinema to tank them, and yet not a peep about the PRO Act failing in the Senate?
Aussie Sheila
@Birdie: With respect, that is BS. It is true that some unions, particularly less well placed unions engaged in ‘concessionary bargaining’ in the 1990s. It was not widely supported, was strongly resisted where it could be and never had any institutional union support. Never.
Conservative responses to shocks and change are par for the course.
However creative responses and strong resistance are also par for the course, and much more my experience over the terrible 1990s to the late aughts.
Australian unions have their faults like all human institutions, but if you think the brutality of US industrial and work life, the paucity of their social wage and the callous disregard for the rights of anyone who isn’t a middle class salaried worker, preferably with a post secondary education degree, has nothing to do with the lack of an organised multi racial working class, you are dreaming.
Just reading the moaning about US racism and the impossibility, allegedly, of doing anything to combat it, is an eye opener. In 2022, it is a disgrace. Absolutely disgraceful, and politically deadly.
I wonder what the Wobblies would have thought?
Betty Cracker
@Aussie Sheila: Regarding individual voter priorities, maybe it’s a Maslow’s hierarchy thing — they perceive disenfranchising voters as an existential threat to democracy, whereas they believe roadblocks to organizing aren’t. That may be a short-sighted or wrong-headed view of the matter, but perhaps this explains it? FWIW, I agree that class plays a role in this too — lots of white collar folks wrongly think their ox isn’t gored when unionization is suppressed.
Birdie
@Aussie Sheila: it’s unfortunate that my view that unions / focus on economic issues aren’t a one size fits all solution in the US context, as well as providing modest empirical evidence for the differences, translates to “I’m an effete conservative voter” and “I dismiss all working class people as racist” in your mind.
Your arguments might be stronger if instead of making this not-so-logical leap, you engaged a little more with the history and evidence of reality vs. your theory of change.
Some more historical facts you might want to look into: redlining, the construction of the interstates, the Great Migration, black voting rates in the South in the post-Civil War period.
In these cases you might learn and agree that the power of the state has been used in all these cases to single out and hurt people of a particular race, not of a particular class. And that is why race matters in US politics and trying to argue that “but this is really about suppressing labor” is off-putting to more than just comfortable liberals.
kalakal
@Baud:
Thank you for that, it clarifies why I have so much trouble understanding US politics even after living here for over a decade. UK politics is very class based, it’s by no means the only factor, racism, sexism etc play their parts, but class is the biggie. It can be hard not to see through that lens.
Geminid
@Aussie Sheila: I wonder how different the Australian and American electorates are. The Australian Labor Party certainly has a stronger labor union component than the Democratic Party, but this seems more or less in proportion to the strength of unions in each country. Both parties are Center-Left coalitions that have gained narrow majorities in federal legislatures, but not consistently.
I think of this when I hear the assertion that the Democrats have “too big a tent” (which I know you are not making right now). I think the notion that if Democrats move left and discard its most moderate voters they will attract many more voters from the left was disproven in the 2020 primaries. Considering how tenuous has been control of federal institutions for either center-left coaltion in recent years it seems to me that both coalitions’ tents are barely big enough.
I think this is changing as more voters in the middle are attracted to the liberal side, and maybe more effectively, repelled by the conservative one.
Birdie
@Aussie Sheila: again I provide evidence (admittedly anecdotal) and your response is “it happened but we didn’t really support it”!?
You have no idea what I think about the comparative economic structures of Australia vs the US or what I wish to be true regarding worker power or my theory of change for how to get there. At this point you are conducting your argument largely against a figure in your imagination, which I’m sure is entertaining for you and ensures that you “win”, but unfortunately leaves me with nothing to respond to and not at all persuaded that you know what you are talking about.
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
I’m hard pressed to think of any democratic country to treats unionization as more fundamental than voting rights.
Even during their heyday here, unions represented only about ⅓ of the workforce.
geg6
@Birdie:
THIS.
Thank you for saying what I was going to say but probably not as cogently.
Denali
@Aussie Shiela and Baud and Birdie,
Very interesting discussion. With regard to the fall of the unions, everyone here remembers the closure of factories and loss of jobs to mainly China. The unions were not able to prevent that. Secondly, with regard to race and the working class, the Republicans are adept at keeping the culture wars going, starting with abortion and moving along to LBGTQ rights. These issues are what people vote about.
Betty Cracker
@Baud: Agree, and I don’t mean to suggest they should be, but I do think Aussie Sheila’s point about (some, not all) middle-class liberals’ indifference to labor rights is a valid one
ETA: We may get something of a read on labor rights’ power as a voting issue in two years when the most pro-union president we’ve had in ages is up for reelection.
The Thin Black Duke
Sorry, but Aussie Sheila is naive. As LBJ said, “If you can convince the lowest white man that he’s better than the best black man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket.”
Aussie Sheila
@Birdie: No I do not agree that that the power of the state has been used to hurt people of a certain race not class.
And I quite understand, as much as non usian can, the history and social disposition of the US South, as well as its impact on wider US Labor politics. But thanks for your input.
Returning to your wider point. My point is precisely the opposite of yours. A state that can and will terrorise members of a group, based on their ostensible ‘race’ (whatever that is), is also terrorising and suppressing that group of people in order to ensure easy, frictionless value extraction form their underpaid, or in the case of slavery, no pay labour.
The extraction of unpaid labour from a people based on the fiction of ‘race’, makes the extraction of low paid and underpaid labour from others not so marked, a lot easier and less resisted.
That is the terrible truth of US politics, and the fact that this truth has been understood somewhat partially, at least for the last 40 years by most well meaning US liberals, while simultaneously they piss and moan that the reason for their relative weakness is the racism of the white bits of the underpaid and low paid, is a testament to the aphorism of the one eyed man being a king.
Please do not lecture me about my professional work for the last 45 years. Thanks.
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
There are bad middle class liberals just as there are bad working class individuals. But I’m not going to engage in debate about whether “liberals” are responsible for labor’s woes.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Just occurred to me I’ve seen Tate’s videos on You Tube once or twice and there were this guy really did come across as what dumb teenage boy’s idea of what a man is. He’s wasn’t misogynistic so much a endless bragging about how smart and successful he was to the point he was hilarious. Tate is the text book definition of the smartest man in the room, just ask him. That he would be bragging about his thirty cars (if he really does own them) to someone who could caress like Thurnberg is quite on brand for his bit of stupidity.
I am got to bet this whole sex trafficking thing is whole lot of dumber that the reports are making it out to be; like Tate’s fighting career is over (he’s 38) and him and his brother tried doing porno, ended up turning into kidnapping and rape, because they are both incompetent dimwits.
hueyplong
@Aussie Sheila: You sound kind of white, especially in the prickliness of your 8:46. No doubt class was a factor in the way the south was run, largely in how the top shelf types weaponized “white trash” racism to keep them as well as blacks “in their place,” but you’ll have to work to convince the people in the Coloreds Only movie theatre balcony that that particular state-enforced rule wasn’t “race not class.”
Starfish
@Amir Khalid: There is an American masculinity panic where no one is a real man anymore. A lot of it was rooted in gamer-gate nonsense. There were various influencers who were going to teach you how to be “real men.” These included people like Jordan Peterson. Tate popped up sometime after that. Then he was banned from the various platforms.
From this link:
Aussie Sheila
@hueyplong: Why yes, I am white skinned. And no, I could not convince people sitting in a movie theatre in the South or indeed in parts of the North 50 years ago, that the social and political arrangements that made separate sitting arrangements mandatory were because of class not race. Because that would be ridiculous, in every possible way.
Just as ridiculous as your attempt to undercut an argument about the deep connections between racialised class politics, and class based contempt for low paid people of all colours, based on your assumption that such arguments are either wrong, or unseemly, coming from someone who is not marked by race in her own polity.
That is the kind of argument that makes the state of US politics at once very clear, and very stupid.
bluefoot
@Aussie Sheila:
Yes, this. I read a book written in part by a former white supremacist last year, and he talked about this. It’s a highly organized and coordinated effort. It surprised me how far-reaching it is. I asked my 20 year old nephew about it, and he said he’s seen it everywhere since he was in his early teens, especially playing online video games.
I’ve been thinking a lot about what the counter programming is, and how it needs to be as proactive as the fascist and white supremacist recruiting. But I have no good answers.
JR
A real Mackie Messer, as Brecht imagined it, not the Bobby Darin version.
Omnes Omnibus
Perhaps you should take your own advice wrt Americans and their lived experience in this political system. We might have picked up a insight or two along the way.
J R in WV
@Aussie Sheila:
Well said, except what does “bien pensant” mean? Glad for your education and languages, but i have no idea what that means even in the context of your otherwise great comment.
Omnes Omnibus
@J R in WV:
Think totebaggers.
J R in WV
@Aussie Sheila:
If you really don’t believe that the “power of the state” has been used to hurt people of a certain race, then your other opinions about American politics are not worth listening to at all. Jim Crow laws were especially used to keep black Americans in their status as an underclass, unable to gain education or good jobs. Even unable to obtain living quarters past uninsulated shacks.
I was shocked as a young teen to drive through the south in the late 1950s and early ’60s and see people living in former slave quarters in the rural south. Signs on water fountains “Colored Only” and “Whites Only” and bathrooms labeled “Whites Only” near a backyard outdoor privy with no sign, but everyone knew who was expected to use that hole in the ground.
I was shocked again as a sailor to be forced by the USN to live in Mississippi in 1972 when my ship was sent there for a shipyard overhaul — it was like time and space travel from the modern USA to nearly unbelievable primitive Jim Crow southern misery.
West Virginia when I was young had no Jim Crow laws, just despicable traditions that kept black people in their neighborhoods and out of good jobs. This was not true of most of the former confederate states, where discrimination was codified not long after the Civil War ended.
PaulB
Then, personally, I see no point in continuing this discussion with you, as the evidence that supports the assertion is overwhelming. Your refusal to acknowledge it is mindboggling.
brantl
@PaulB: You’re missing her point. She’s saying it wasn’t JUST race, and she’s right. It was multi-level.
GibberJack
@Aussie Sheila: I have enjoyed reading your perspective on US labor and class, and I do agree the comfortable middle is apathetic and as I have seen myself, often hostile to unions. But with this…
…I’m afraid you have absolutely missed the key to US politics and society.
There is no way to understand the US without understanding it’s all about the race. Always has been.
White privilege. White status. White power.
Everything in US politics is about race, directly or indirectly. From education to jobs to housing to taxes to loans to transportation to settlement patterns to the shape of American cityscapes and especially the current alignments of the 2 major parties.
It’s all about white supremacy. White privilege. White status. White power.
As far as class goes, perhaps it could be said the US society is more like a caste system but if so, it is one based on race. And because it is race based, a solution based on unions and economics won’t (and doesn’t) work like it seems it should.
White people willingly vote against what we think is their economic self interest. But their real self interest is to preserve their privilege power and status, real or imagined, no matter the cost.
Too many people cannot wrap their head around this fact: MAGA does not vote against their self interest.
This was the secret of the Republican party. MAGA was never about economic anxiety. It was always about race.
The GOP message is, no matter how poor or ignorant or crass a white man is, he can always tell himself he is better than any black man.
GibberJack
@brantl: I think we got her point here. She’s wrong.
Throughout American history the power of the state very much has been used again and again specifically to hurt people of a certain race.
Only in the last 40 or so years, since the Civil Rights Act has this begun to change, and especially apparent in the last 15 years when a black man actually became head of that state.
And MAGA arose as a white backlash. Trump especially promised to use the power of the state to hurt Those People.