On Right Wing Co-Opting: How Political Concepts Lose Their Meaning
Today I’m sharing a poem about the trend of ideas and policies to get co-opted and alienated from their original meaning in service of other political agendas.
It emerged from a walk and talk in the woods with a philosophically-minded friend of mine, who brought up how Donald Trump has now advocated state funding for free college education, albeit through an online university infused with his own cult of personality and reductive white supremacist views, to counter the “wokeness and jihadism” he claims current academic institutions are promoting. Thus what was initially a left-wing proposal has been repurposed by a right-wing populist to garner support from anyone swayed by the promise of tuition-free college or aligned with Trump’s nonsensical culture war crusades.
This subversion of ideas from their original context is far from a one-time event, nor does it only apply one-way on the political spectrum. Another topic of conversation was how the movement towards natural eating and organic foods, now so associated with leftist hippies, actually emerged in large part from Nazi Germany, where authorities equated nutritional purity with racial purity.
These days, however, I notice much more manipulation of political language to distort public perceptions from the Trumpian right. Many terms that once held clear meaning now seem incoherent or leave a bad taste in one’s mouth by association to the far-flung conspiracy theories of the alt-right.
Now people who identify as libertarian — a philosophy supposedly in support of small government and social liberties — find themselves voting for a jingoistic national socialist with clear dictatorial tendencies who wants to supercharge punitive law enforcement and clamp down on bodily autonomy. People who feel left behind by changing sexual mores rail against the phantom of “cancel culture” that rarely extends beyond online forums, enabling power-brokers like Harvey Weinstein to escape legal consequences for their patterns of abuse. Following a YouTube rabbit hole of new age spiritual conjecture could draw you into the gaslight-y orbit of a right wing news source like InfoWars. A phrase as ambiguous as “do your own research” becomes code for conspiratorial thinking and denying consensus reality for the sake of rebellious self-aggrandizement. Jewish sympathies are weaponized as cause to keep funding the militarized Zionist state’s bombing of civilians and aid workers in Palestine.
There are many factors contributing to this absurd state of affairs, even beyond Trump Republicans’ Machiavellian tactics to endorse anything or anyone that might help them maintain their power and economic interests. Mainly, I’m thinking of an intellectual stagnancy in the Democratic establishment that helped give Trump a foothold among the nation’s politically disaffected populace in the first place. Despite the lessons of Hilary Clinton’s failure in 2016, the Democratic Party still hesitates to embrace leftists ideals like taxpayer-funded higher education in a misguided attempt to cater to the narratives of their opponents. This strategy ends up backfiring once a shrewd opportunist like Trump get his hands on the idea, and we learn even the Republican base have no issue with socialist state education when it’s coming from their candidate — it’s just the word “socialist” they’ve been conditioned to treat as some kind of boogeyman. We can witness this tension and dissociation between liberal elites and grassroots leftists playing out almost in real time, as university professors and administrators attempt to silence their students’ protests to divest from Israel.
The outcome of all this is a political environment where almost is nothing as it seems for very long — certainly not long enough to build consensus. The hostile dynamics around these issues can intimidate newcomers or anyone who hasn’t kept up with the latest linguistic gymnastics from joining the debate at all. I know for me, this creates a great temptation to withdraw from political conversations entirely for fear of unknowingly backing some abhorrent personality or policy in disguise. Yet resorting to this would only enable multinational corporations, strongmen politicians, and belligerent zealots to occupy even more public airspace than they already do.
Aspiring to create a multicultural democratic society means learning to continually listen and engage in these loaded discussions with unprecedented levels of nuance and patience, especially in times of rapid technological and ideological shifts. Otherwise we risk signing off on a package of potentially catastrophic policy ideas just because they use the right buzzwords, come from the right side of the debate stage, or serve our financial interests. We’ve been conditioned to expect our political power can be reduced to just one binary choice between partisan personalities every four years, if you can even make it to the polls during a regular workday. Whatever your philosophies or party loyalties, we deserve better than this, the illusion of choice and famine of clarity.
I encourage all of us to keep parsing the nuance, spitting out the misinformation, and demanding a system that protects our vulnerable populations and fosters the exchange of policy ideas in good faith, rather than what we have now, which blames victims for their own abuse and robs words of their valuable meaning to further the fragile dominance of a predominantly white male hetero-normative elite.
Now, poem.
If you put enough honey in the poison
and still call it poison,
half the population will learn to love their illness
while the other half will taste the bitterness
and hunger for the sun of love’s
affection, uninfected;
then for generations to come,
starvation will be seen as virtue.
Who put this fascism in
my new age medicine?
Or this white revisionism
in my higher education?
What calcified news outlet
seized empty open minds
with plausible deniability
to support our imagination’s occupation?
Look who’s selling now
the products of the savior
you started to believe in last year.
Cancer gains good graces in organs by association
so check beneath the label each manufacturers’ affiliations
for your eye candy’s malnutrition facts.
Call for Feedback
Are there any political concepts or policies you’ve noticed lose or radically change their meaning? How do you stay involved and try to parse what’s going on politically without endangering your sanity?
Please leave a comment and share below if you have an answer or any other thoughts. Your attention and consideration are much appreciated, and any way you engage helps promote my work. Thank you.
Originally published at https://foragingformore.substack.com.
