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What We’ve Learned. Where We Go Next.

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Hegemonicon - An Investigation Into the Workings of Power
What We've Learned. Where We Go Next.
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In this solo season finale, William makes his case for his approach to voting in this year’s presidential election. Looking ahead, he lays out his vision for where left movements need to start building infrastructure next, regardless of the election outcomes, based on what he learned from his guests this season about international solidarity.

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[00:00:00] Sound on Tape: This podcast is presented by Convergence, a magazine for radical insights.

[00:00:07] 

[00:00:07] William Lawrence: Just a good disclaimer here. Convergence is a 501c3 publication and political views expressed here are my own perspectives on a personal basis. Not that of Convergence, its editorial board, or any of its sponsors.

[00:00:29] This is the Hegemonicon podcast, where we are investigating the workings of power. What is power? How does it work? Who has it? What are they doing with it? How the heck do we get it? And other small questions like that. I’m your host, William Lawrence, and I’m an organizer from Lansing, Michigan. Currently I work with the Rent is Too Damn High Coalition, an alliance of tenant unions and housing justice groups across the state of Michigan.

[00:00:58] Formerly, I was a climate justice organizer for 10 years, including as a co founder of Sunrise Movement, the youth organization that put the Green New Deal on the political map.

[00:01:11] Hello, my friends. This is the Hegemonicon podcast. I’m your host, William Lawrence, recording once again from Lansing, Michigan. Today is October 18th, 2024. And this is the concluding episode of our 10 episode series on internationalism. It will also be the final episode of this podcast for now. I really want to bring you a lot more episodes in the future and hopefully some more writing and convergence as well.

[00:01:37] I just need to figure out how to fit it all into my life. And so for the time being, I need to buckle down to my organizing work here in Michigan. But may I reappear. Lord willing to your podcast feed again sometime in 2025, I do want to make one programming note about this series, which is that we were working really hard to get a Palestinian American guest on the show and working to schedule with several different people.

[00:02:00] And the timing just didn’t work out. So I do feel that was an obvious miss in this series on internationalism. And I want to acknowledge that, but the Palestinian struggle has been a huge motive for doing this series in the first place. It’s been there as part of almost all of our conversations. I’ll be talking about it in this episode as well.

[00:02:18] Over these last 10 episodes, we’ve had a series of amazing and thoughtful guests. I’ve learned a lot from them and I’ve been hearing good feedback from you listeners. I hope we’ve been able to expand your horizons when it comes to our political practice around internationalist analysis and organizing.

[00:02:33] As I’ve described from various angles, the Biden years have seen the return of foreign policy to the mainstream of us politics and the concerns of the U S left. This has prompted this present series on internationalism. I’ve noted that internationalism poses difficult questions for the U S left. Even the people who have spent decades building deep and principled relationships with global South organizers, note that it’s very difficult to craft politically potent demands and campaigns that are not They unite the interests of the U.

[00:03:02] S. working class with the nations of the global South. When politically potent internationalist campaigns do arise, like the Palestine Solidarity Movement, which is far and away the most impactful internationalist movement in the U. S. today, they pose the most difficult questions about all of our relationships to the American state and militarism.

[00:03:23] These are difficult questions under any circumstances. The coincidence of the Gaza genocide with the U. S. presidential election places all of these tough questions on the table at once. I didn’t plan it this way, but it so happens that our wrap up on this season of the show is falling the week before election day.

[00:03:42] It wouldn’t feel right not to address it all directly and together. So I thought I’d do something a bit different and record a solo episode to wrap up this season and put my perspective on Harris and Trump on the record before whatever the hell happens on November 5th and the weeks afterwards. All right, let’s get into it.

[00:04:01] I did it. I voted early by mail here in the critical swing state of Michigan. I voted for Kamala Harris for president, Alyssa Slotkin for Senate, and Curtis Hertel for US representative. Warmongers, every single one of them. This was without a doubt, the hardest vote I’ve ever cast. When Harris replaced Biden as the presumptive nominee in July, there were lots of people, and I was one of them, who were willing and even eager to rally behind Harris and make, if not a full throated, at least a medium throated case for her election.

[00:04:44] I stated back then that left and progressive forces should consolidate behind Harris because I think it’s very important that Donald Trump not become president again. And that’s why I ended up casting the vote I cast. For the candidate who stands a chance of blocking Trump from the presidency. And as despicable as I find Harris, and as cowardly as her campaign has been, I fear a Trump 2 presidency even more.

[00:05:14] I voted for her. A lot of my comrades consider this matter of Lesser evil voting to be a settled question. If more evil is bad, then lesser evil must be good. Our listeners and readers here at Convergence Magazine are familiar with these arguments. One of the major points of unity at Convergence is the belief in the danger we face from an emboldened far right, the MAGA movement, which is an alliance of extractive industry, Christian nationalists, patriarchs, and gun nuts, who With Trump as their deranged unfiltered front man, the block and build strategy holds that leftists should tactically support Democrats to block Trump while continuing to build our independent analysis organization and identity.

[00:06:02] This strategy also. Holds that casting left wing third party votes in general elections is a dead end and will not achieve the desired outcome of a stronger politically independent left in the U. S. Owing to the objective dynamics of the first past the post electoral system. And I still believe this is the correct course of action.

[00:06:26] But I’ve got to admit that voting for Harris It really made me sick. My advice to the block and build tendency, of which I am a part, is that we owe it to ourselves, to our comrades, and to our family members, to our neighbors, to whoever we’re in relationship with, and we owe it to ourselves and our analysis, not to sugar coat what’s happening.

[00:06:47] Lesser evil is still evil. So we’re better off to simply say it. What Biden is doing, and what Harris promises to continue doing in Gaza, is obviously evil. And it turns out that this is the only the latest in a series of evil acts, which have been supported on an utterly bipartisan basis by the U. S.

[00:07:08] Military industrial complex and arms industry. For over a year now, the Biden Harris administration has been arming Israel and its murderous quest to completely eliminate Palestinians in Gaza to annex evermore of the West Bank and to take down Hezbollah in Lebanon. War with Iran is on the lips of the Israelis, and it would seem that the U.

[00:07:29] S. foreign security establishment is more and more favorable to this prospect as well. For over a year now, the Biden Harris administration has helped to lead a McCarthyist witch hunt against anybody who would speak in favor of the Palestinian resistance, and anybody who would dare to question the righteousness of the Israeli militarized ethnostate.

[00:07:51] Arab and Muslim Americans, our friends, our neighbors, have been cast out from liberal media and academia for daring to speak and organize in defense of their cousins in the Middle East. Last week, Israel bombed a hospital yard in northern Gaza, filled with Palestinian patients in tents. The tents burned.

[00:08:09] We saw patients with IV tubes still hanging from their arms, reaching up through the flames, crying out for help as they burned alive. Surely this is hell on earth. Watching this for a year, watching this unfold and knowing that it is our government that Arming these acts, providing the bombs, we watching and protesting and demonstrating, posting through it on social media when we don’t know what else to do, all of this for over a year now, is also a kind of hell on earth.

[00:08:44] The worst thing about casting a vote for Harris is that we know all of this will continue to get worse under her presidency. Harris has positioned herself as a continuation of the presidential election. She said nothing comes to mind that she would do differently than Biden. On foreign policy, she promises a hawkish posture.

[00:09:04] She relishes in referring to our military as the most lethal fighting force in the world. I shiver. I can’t imagine being somebody who would take such obvious relish as she does in uttering that phrase. She threatens an offensive and preemptive war against Iran, which she calls the most dangerous and destabilizing force in the Middle East.

[00:09:24] I don’t know, but it looks like Israel to me. Of course, Trump also promises more support for Israel and more misery for Palestinians. He said he’d let Netanyahu finish the job in Gaza, a genocidal declaration if there ever was one. This line has been repeatedly trotted out by Democratic flaks pushing for a Harris vote.

[00:09:44] They claim that Trump would be even worse for Palestine than Harris. Frankly, I don’t see any evidence to support this claim. I believe that Trump would be equally bad, but obviously the Biden Harris policy is to let the Israelis, under Netanyahu, do whatever they want. And what they want, apparently, is to eliminate every last Palestinian in Gaza, so no.

[00:10:06] No. We can’t say with integrity that there is any difference between Trump and Harris on the Middle East, except that Harris has more directly presided over the current horrors as the sitting vice president. U. S. Israeli supremacy, along with Arab and Muslim expendability, are a thoroughly bipartisan project.

[00:10:27] Is there any 1990?

[00:10:34] In which I have seen a Republican led, bipartisan war against Iraq. Then a Democrat led, bipartisan sanctions regime against Iraq. Then another Republican led, bipartisan war against Iraq. Then a Democrat led, bipartisan military intervention in Libya as well as Syria. And now a Democrat led, bipartisan armory.

[00:10:56] In support of the annihilation of Gaza. No, we owe it to ourselves not to sugarcoat this. Anything the people of the Middle East may fear under Trump may just as well come to pass under Harris. But following our series on internationalism, let’s consider as well the rest of the globe. What would a President Harris or a President Trump bring for U.

[00:11:17] S. policy in East Asia, where China is the regional power and tensions between China and the United States are heightening? And what about Latin America and Africa and the rest of the global South? Here we can draw on the lessons from some of our prior episodes on this show, especially my interviews with Toby Chow, Van Jackson, and Tim Sahai.

[00:11:38] Toby discussed how the United States, under Trump and Biden, has entered a dangerous trend of geoeconomic competition with China. Economic competition is now being expressed in terms of military competitiveness. U. S. policymakers tell us that China’s economic rise is not only an economic threat to U. S.

[00:11:59] businesses and workers, but a potential military risk to the United States. Bidinomics. Which I fought for as a proponent of the green new deal has taken on an economic nationalist emphasis through policies designed to advance and proliferate us technology and business while weakening and isolating the Chinese.

[00:12:21] If this stance is reciprocated by China, Toby warns that we could enter a zero sum inter imperialist competition, similar to that, which set the European powers against each other in the lead up to world war one. My interview with Van Jackson helped me to understand why the U. S. foreign policy establishment was so primed to see China as a threat and so ready to enter this escalation spiral.

[00:12:46] Van highlighted a very simple U. S. policy, an obvious one, but something that’s actually crazy if you stop to think about it. The official security doctrine of the United States is permanent global primacy. The United States must be capable of winning any war in any arena of the globe at any time. And ideally two or more wars at once.

[00:13:09] This assumption that the United States must enjoy extraordinary and unchallenged primacy of force. It was simply a reality for most of the 20th century. After World War II, the United States was the only power not reduced to rubble and it possessed something like 50 percent of the productive capacity in the entire world.

[00:13:29] Today. Things are different. The hub of global population and economic activity has shifted to Asia, and especially China. Chinese productive capacity gives it the potential to become a great military power. Meanwhile, the vastness and roundness of the earth makes it inherently difficult for the U. S. to compete militarily with China in, say, the Taiwan Strait.

[00:13:53] So the truth, Van tells us, Is that the U. S. Has already lost primacy in the Taiwan Strait, but we can’t stand that. So we insist on weakening China risking war to maintain primacy rather than cooperating with China to maintain the peace and tackling together global problems like climate change.

[00:14:12] Speaking of climate change, my interview with Tim Sahai revealed how the U. S. and Europe are failing to lead a global energy transition to halt global warming. Countries of the Global South need technology, they need generous investment, and they need relief of old debts to be able to transition to renewable energy while developing their economies.

[00:14:33] Instead of any of this, the Northern Financial Centers have continued to place restrictive debt traps upon the Global South. The North has said, climate change, be damned, we will only invest in you if it’s even more profitable for us. Tim quoted no less of an authority than Larry Summers, the Dean of Northern Economists, admitting that the flow of wealth since COVID has continued from the South to the North, rather than the North to South transfers that would be necessary for a global clean energy transition.

[00:15:05] The rich are getting richer, the poor are getting poorer, and the whole world The key point for our discussion of the election is that all of these are matters of bipartisan consensus. The future is plain. With Democrats or Republicans in charge of the United States, our military and economic foreign policy has us on a spiraling trajectory.

[00:15:29] Towards a more antagonistic and war torn world. So in our search for any difference between a Democratic and Republican agenda, we have to turn to domestic politics. And it’s here that we do find a difference. Who will be targeted for repression here at home? We can say with some confidence, based on what we’re currently seeing, that under Democrats or Republicans, Palestinian solidarity activists will be targeted for repression.

[00:15:58] We can say Under Democrats or Republicans, that immigrants. We’ll be locked up and detained at the border, but under Republicans, additional groups will be targeted. Jacinta Gonzalez highlighted how Trump has threatened, not just border enforcement, but mass deportations, ice going door to round up the millions of undocumented immigrants who live In cities and towns all across this country under Trump, trans people may be prevented from receiving healthcare as a matter of law and policy, and not just in the red states where this is already occurring, but everywhere.

[00:16:39] Women may have their right to an abortion and other essential healthcare taken away. Not just in the red states where this is already occurring. We can also say with confidence that workers right to organize and form a union in the U. S. will be undermined by a Trump MAGA regime, rather than bolstered under a Democratic presidency.

[00:17:02] There is also the possibility that Trump will partake in mass politicized repression utterly brazen Open politicized assault on his enemies, liberals and the left, using the full force of arms and the law. So taking this all together, I’d say the scorecard on issues for this election looks something like this.

[00:17:25] On the Middle East, we have a bipartisan. Death cult, a promise of more war and destruction. On China and global trade, a bipartisan path to ruin and risk of additional war. On immigration, a bipartisan commitment to cruelty at the border. But we can say that Trump poses a greater threat to undocumented people already living in the U.

[00:17:53] S. And on trans and women’s rights and labor rights, Harris will offer some protection against the right wing onslaught. Trump, meanwhile, promises to intensify that onslaught, denying people their rights at the cost of their lives and self determination. So looking at the scorecard, I can see three ways.

[00:18:17] of expressing the case for Harris. And I’ve got to say that I find all of them deeply dissatisfying. But real. Let’s take each in order. The first argument is expressed in terms of space. The democratic space. The space of human rights. Free speech. Liberal democratic protections has shrunk terribly in the last 10 years.

[00:18:43] Clearly, there is no human rights in Palestine. Clearly, there is no free speech in the United States for the proponents of anti Zionism. Even some democratic space, some rights, some room to maneuver still remain. for most U. S. citizens on most issues. A vote for Harris is a vote to preserve some of this space, whereas Trump is a promise to restrict it even more.

[00:19:09] The democratic space is shrinking either way, but a vote to Harris is a vote to shrink it less. The second argument for Harris can be expressed in terms of time. Things are getting worse, but this is about the rate at which they get worse. Under Harris. Things will get worse. Under Trump, it will get worse faster.

[00:19:34] So much worse that we won’t be able to reverse course any longer. So vote Harris to buy some time. Of course, this is deeply relativistic. Based on where you are situated. For the victims in Gaza, there is no time. For the victims of Hurricane Helene, there is no more time. But for some of us who still have time, Harris offers more time to make arrangements.

[00:19:59] Whereas Trump promises an immediate attack. An ominous knock on the door.

[00:20:08] Either way, the trend is terrible, and I, this is what I just think we need to not sugarcoat at all. Either way, the trend is terrible. Either way, where we are headed in a year or two years is likely to be even worse than where we are right now. But with Harris, fewer oppressed groups here in the United States will be under direct assault in the next four years.

[00:20:31] And this brings me to the third argument for Harris, which incorporates these first two. This happens to be the most forceful case for Harris. A vote for Harris. That I can make. We are in hell. Let’s say that we’re in the first circle of hell and we’re descending deeper into hell. With Harris, we hope we may only enter the second or third circle of hell.

[00:20:55] And with Trump, on the other hand, we fear we may plunge all the way to the fourth or fifth circle of hell. So if you are in a swing state, vote for Harris, vote for the second or third circle of hell. That’s what I did. The point of voting for Harris is to buy time in which a greater number of us can make plans.

[00:21:16] Time in which we can forge solidarities and build a shared strategy, rather than being totally fractured on the defensive, fighting desperately on our own for our own survival. If Harris wins, The critical question is how to make use of the time that we buy because continuing the status quo is unacceptable.

[00:21:38] This is not a story about a gradual advance in the direction of justice that we simply must continue one step at a time. That’s the progressive argument for Harris that I actually find wrong and misleading. We are not on the advance. The conditions are not progressing. They are regressing. We are on the defensive, on the retreat, descending deeper into hell.

[00:22:00] So after you vote, and once the result of the vote is certified, which is sure to be a battle in itself because Trump is clearly preparing his supporters for violence to contest the outcome, the most important thing is to find somebody else who can see this hell for what it is. And let’s make a plan to climb out of hell.

[00:22:19] Let me share one more metaphor that struck me as appropriate. As the writer Malcolm Harris, no relation to Kamala, put it, Voting against Trump seems like throwing up your hands against a punch to the face. Probably the right call if that’s all you can do, but it’s an indication you’re in the process of getting beat up.

[00:22:41] We’re getting beat up, and we’re going to keep getting beat up until we find a way to change the situation. So as I conclude, allow me to offer a few notes on this subject. Necessary tasks to stop getting beat up and begin our journey out of hell. Number one, we should redouble our efforts to build left and progressive political independence, working as part of and apart from the Democratic ballot line as conditions dictate.

[00:23:09] It is essential, I believe it is essential, that there be a left progressive candidate for president in 2028 running in the Democratic primary. The absence of such a candidate in 2023 and 2024 has resulted in left disorganization, a rise in dead end third partyism, and a rightward slant by both Biden and Harris lacking any challenge from their left.

[00:23:36] In my current assessment, the Working Families Party is the most likely organization to keep strengthening its national party infrastructure unless the Democratic Socialists of America can overcome its factional infighting and align on a coherent national strategy. WFP should bear the responsibility of recruiting a progressive presidential standard bearer for 2028.

[00:23:59] This is a big task, but I really think there is no excuse not to do it. Clearly we were better poised with Bernie in the race in 2016 and 2020, and that shaped the whole complexion of the election positively. And we have suffered deeply for the lack of a similar candidate in 2024. Number two, we should continue to rebuild the labor union movement.

[00:24:22] On May 1st, 2028, the United Auto Workers will lead the nearest thing we’ve seen to a general strike in generations. The left at large should pour into this project and aim to make it a signature intervention during that year, which is also the Number three, we should continue to build the tenant union movement, which responds to the heightening cost of living crisis, builds multiracial working class organization, and calls the question around a fundamental class division in our society, which is the ownership of land.

[00:24:54] This is what I’m doing on a daily basis here in Michigan. Number four, all of these preceding projects must have an internationalist analysis. We have already seen that demands for economic justice, racial equity, or gender equality in the United States can be assimilated into a project of imperialist war and global economic exploitation.

[00:25:19] The interests of working class people in the United States do not inevitably align with those of oppressed people abroad. Those solidarities, those shared interests, must be actively forged. My conversations with Currie Peterson Smith and Cindy Wisner offer some notes on where to begin and what has already been tried over the last several decades among social movement leftists in the U.

[00:25:40] S. when it comes to building internationalist connections. My conversations with Bob Master and Carl Rosen, meanwhile, identified a positive trend towards greater anti war sentiment and organizing within the U. S. labor movement. But we also discussed the troubling and under interrogated identification of U.

[00:25:59] S. labor with the project of U. S. economic dominance, which we are learning is also entangled with Ongoing military primacy, disentangling these alliances, learning how U. S. workers can fight for themselves and against U. S. primacy is an essential task requiring developments in both analysis and practice.

[00:26:20] Task number five, we must strengthen the anti war movement, the movement for an arms embargo against Israel, but also a broader push against militarism and the U. S. doctrine of primacy. We on the left need to allocate resources and strategic attention to develop a demilitarist, anti primacist tendency in U.

[00:26:39] S. politics, a sustained campaign against the war machine. This means pushing for de escalation and detente with China, in Ukraine, and in the Middle East, and dispelling the narratives that would tell us that it’s in our interest to continue any of these wars. As I say this, I find it a bit laughable that such an effort could succeed.

[00:27:04] Clearly, the foreign policy establishment, famously nicknamed the Blob, is well insulated from public pressure. The strategy would need to be far more sophisticated than just having people in the streets, and truthfully, I have little idea what an anti militarist strategy in the belly of the beast would look like.

[00:27:24] The odds are against us. But perhaps, even if we fail to kill the beast, we can restrain it. This is the point that has sat with me from my most recent conversation with David Adler. U. S. leftists need the sobriety to recognize that the U. S. is the heart of global capital and its war making enterprises.

[00:27:46] Our opposition is powerful, and their ideas are deeply entrenched. among segments of the U. S. population. Given the balance of forces, one may reasonably argue that socialism is less likely in the United States than in nearly any other country in the world. Therefore, socialists in the United States should be at least as occupied with restraining the beast and preserving space for sovereign self determination by oppressed peoples abroad.

[00:28:18] As we should be concerned with winning full socialism in the United States, which is a unlikely proposition. This is my lesson from the Biden administration. Regardless of our ultimate aims, we must share a vow to oppose and resist U. S. imperialism, which is now fully embarked upon a reckless drive If being a patriotic U.

[00:28:44] S. citizen means support for imperial wars, this is a part of Americanism that we must reject wholeheartedly. Political expediency can never be an excuse to shy away from these issues or to give rhetorical cover to the brokers of war. We cannot claim innocence. We must find the means to stop this madness.

[00:29:10] But what if we can’t stop it? What if the military industrial ideological complex is, as it appears, impenetrable to public accountability or sanction? And what if we refuse all the while to become a happy participant, to live at peace in the heart of the war machine? Then, it would seem, we must find our own way of waging a protracted, generational resistant struggle.

[00:29:42] Call it a forever war.

[00:29:48] This podcast is written and hosted by me, William Lawrence. Our producer is Josh Elstro, and it is published by Convergence, a magazine for radical insights. You can help support this show and others like it by becoming a subscriber of Convergence at convergencemag. com slash donate. Standard subscriptions start at 10 and really help support the sustainability of shows like this one.

[00:30:11] One time donations of any amount are welcome there as well. You can find a direct link to donate or subscribe in the show notes. This has been The Hegemonicon. Thanks for listening and let’s talk again soon.

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