INTERCEPTEDJeremy Scahill
November 10 2019, 6:00 a.m.
ASTRA TAYLOR: "And this is where we do need to take a sort of, cold hard look at what we’re up against."
SNIPPET:
JS: It’s also when you talk about Republicans — and I’ve read some other interviews with you recently — you’ve described the
current GOP, but
also it’s ideological figures, conservative columnist, pundits and others as being, and this is how you describe it,
“tired of democracy and the equality that it demands.” I want you to explain that but at the same time, aren’t they continuing to win?
AT: Oh, yeah, right. Because the thing is, they have power. I mean, this is the thing, this is what the left always says, right, yes, they have money, but we have the many, right? [But] somehow we need to organize. It’s a collective action problem. I think we’re in a really interesting moment. And we’re similar ages and so yeah, we grew up under this neoliberal, end of history hegemony, right, this idea even if we didn’t believe it, but it was there in the ether with capitalism and democracy go together. This is liberal democracy, markets, increased prosperity, lift people up, elections will follow. And that’s it, right? This is the pinnacle of human evolution [and] that marriage is breaking apart.
And we see that in some really positive ways, I think, with the resurgence of socialism as something not only that we can discuss, but it’s actually gaining traction, politically. But what I found when I went out with the film, and I started interviewing people and just talking to people from all walks of life is that young conservatives, people in their early 20s,
I just assumed that as Republicans, they would still speak in terms of the link between capitalism and democracy, right? They would still say, hey, markets are democratic. We get to choose. Choosing is good. Choosing is what democracy is all about, and talk in terms of a kind of Reagan freedom of the marketplace kind of rhetoric.
That’s not what I found at all. I found young people who are keenly aware of their own status as an economic and social elite, who recognize — they had no delusions — they recognize that the empowerment of the majority of people would mean that they would lose some of their privilege. They would lose their economic privilege, that they would lose what is essentially the sort of affirmative action that they take for granted. It’s just how the universe should be. And so they mock democracy outright. T
hey mock democracy, they mocked urban centers with their large populations. And they basically said, we don’t want democracy. We want the Electoral College. We want the Senate. We want the Supreme Court. And we want to tell you all what to do with your lives and we do not want you fighting to increase our taxes or fighting for better treatment in the workplace, or fighting to expand the number of refugees and immigrants in this country.So, that was interesting for me because
the gloves are off and conservatives are returning to their aristocratic roots. There was a strange moment, 20th century with the USSR facing off against the United States where it was convenient for capitalists to speak in terms of democracy, to wrap themselves up in that mantle, right. They don’t need it anymore and that’s where we’re at.
So if they want capitalism, and they understand that it’s not a democratic framework, then all then I think that radicalizes democracy.
[Crosstalk.]
AT: I’m saying that radicalizes democracy, because it means that we don’t have to pretend that definition, that 20th century definition is the definition.
We can say what democracy, it is rule of the poor, right? It is inclusion. It is public decommodified goods. It’s all the things that you rich, privileged ass holes are afraid of and that’s why I think we have to fight more passionately for the idea of democracy. Because for me, and I bet you’re the same as well, it’s like, our democracy in the aughts, like 2001, two, three, four, was such a sold-out word, just taken by George W. Bush, by all of the hawks, claiming to democratize the Middle East when really they were just imposing like, when really they were just engaging in this imperial project and extracting what wealth there was and giving a
about the people who actually live there. So democracy actually had this really hollow ring to me. But I think in this context, I think times change and I think we’re in a moment where, yeah, democracy, the radical implications of it are becoming more clear, not just to the left but to the right.
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