Yesterday, an epic moment in America’s Presidential race. Bernie Sanders dropped out, at last. So. Why did Bernie’s revolution fail?

Bernie tried to wage a class war. It failed. The average American rejected social democracy — vehemently. But why would anyone reject better healthcare, retirement, income, savings for themselves? Because the false consciousness is too deep. Americans are bombarded a thousand times a day with warnings against “socialism.” Yet Bernie was never a socialist. But he let himself be defined that way. He seemed to revel in it. He was, at best, a minor league social democrat — he wasn’t calling, even, for hospitals to be nationalized, after all. And in all that mess, that confusion — who could make sense of any of that? — the average person simply walked away, and America’s last chance at social democracy for a generation winked out, as Americans rejected Bernie’s class war before it even really began.

So how exactly did all this happen?

Now, this is going to be a harsh essay: many of you won’t be used to me criticizing the left. But I must. Because this is a time when the left should be cleaning up. Pandemics, widespread dissatisfaction, stagnant economies, skyrocketing inequality, massive resentment against rich elites? Hello — the left should be absolutely crushing the right. And yet, in nation after nation — Bernie’s only the latest example, coming shortly after Jeremy Corbyn’s landslide defeat — the left is failing. Badly. Why?

I don’t come to criticize the man. I admire Bernie immensely. Who else has the intestinal fortitude, as they say, to try and change a country for…fifty years? Especially one like America? Americans are as ornery as mules and as stubborn as goats. In good times, it’s a quality worth having. But in bad times, times like these…well, perhaps you see my point.

I do think that there are serious and big lessons to be learned from the failure of Bernie’s movement, though. Lessons about why the left is failing globally, as a viable political coalition and movement. Why it has lost its mojo and spirit and power.

The first thing worth observing is a simple fact. Bernie lost because young people didn’t turn out to vote, in state after state. Now, for any other candidate, this would simply reflect a dismal trend. But for Bernie, it’s different. Because young people were his most vocal and vociferous advocates. And yet, when crunch time came, they didn’t vote. They simply stayed at home, checking Facebook and maybe tweeting encouraging messages. If they had voted, it would have been more than enough to if not put Bernie over the top, then at least keep him neck and neck in the race. So what on earth happened?

Trying to prove the cause of a negative, an absence, is a little bit like grasping a shadow. You can try, but. All that we really have is opinion. Here is mine. It’s not just conjecture though — hopefully, it’s clear thinking, though you can be the judge of that.

Mom!! Umair’s lecturing me again!! Make him stop!!!!!!1

Forgive me, Tucker. Now let me explain what I mean by all that.

The left has a harder job than the right. The left must elevate and inspire people. It must educate and enlighten them. The right? It can pander to their worst instincts. Especially in difficult times. It can point to some powerless nobody — that Mexican migrant worker, picking berries to sell to yuppies — and shout, as Trump does, “They are the cause of your problems!! Eliminate them, and you will Be Great Again!!!” The left can’t do that. It’s job isn’t so easy. And yet the left today hasn’t faced up to the scale and scope of it’s real work, it’s true challenge, either.

And so it falls short, over and over again, across the globe. Bernie’s movement failing is just one example of that trend. Not so long ago, an eerie parallel happened in Britain — Jeremy Corbyn’s movement failed, another elderly man, leading platoons of angry young things into battle. Only when it came time for the fight…just as with Bernie…on voting day…nobody much showed up.

Bernie’s movement — again, not the man — was a strange thing. It claimed to be left. So left that nobody, one was told, over and over again could be more left. It was led by a certain kind of angry young man: disaffected, embittered, with a chip the size of Arkansas on their shoulder. Now, this kind of young man would tend to lead a tribe of his own. At this magazine or that podcast or this blog. And off they would go, tribes of angry young men, looking for someone to…scrap with.

And more often than not, looking for fights, the people they were scrapping with ended up being…on their very own side.

What were the fights over? Nothing much, really — not anything real, that’s for sure. They were over the fine points of abstruse theories. They were over who said what and when. They were over angels dancing on the head of a pin. Do you subscribe to this and that neo-Marxist theory of wage theft? No? Ha ha ha, you’re an idiot! No, a class traitor!! To the digital guillotines!!!

Now, this strange saga of an old prizefighter leading platoons of angry young men was mirrored across the cultural landscape. Just as Bernie’s angry young men would literally insult you to your dying day over questioning some vague theory of this-and-that, the same was true in a larger sense on the left. Maybe you were the kind of person who agreed, by and large, with the ideas of public healthcare, retirement, education, income, savings, childcare — social democracy — but you questioned whether you wanted your kid to really use gender neutral bathrooms.

To the gallows!! Get them!! Soon enough, a mob of angry young things wielding digital pitchforks would show up at your virtual door. In really bad cases, you’d be hounded out of a job, doxxed, humiliated…shamed. You’d be left terrorized, anxious, afraid. Dehumanized — literally, not metaphorically.

Shamed. Terrified. Dehumanized. Wait — isn’t that all these people claimed to be against? What on earth was going on here?

And weren’t these angry young things so eager to pick fights digitally…to be the very ones…who later failed to show up for the real battle….on voting day?

My friends, I can’t think that’s a coincidence. It has happened too many times, across too many countries, and is now so predictable that it bears all the hallmarks of a relationship. Leftism today — what’s left of it — goes like this. Follow some angry young man (or woman, but mostly men.) Let them misinform and miseducate you about what leftism really is and means. Plod after them, eagerly, into virtual battle. Attack your own side, relentlessly, viciously, having tested the virginal purity of their ideological perfection. When that purity’s found wanting, sacrifice those virgins. No matter if they’re a friend, ally, supporter, partner, in the cause of building a working left. Get them!!

And then, when it’s time for the real battle…voting…well…since all the work’s been done…your ego’s been mollified…and you feel smug, superior, and “validated”…why bother showing up at all?

Vanity.

I know. You probably hate me for saying the above. I don’t blame you. But doesn’t it have a tiny ring of truth to it?

What gets lost in all this? The larger job of the left. In two specific ways.

First, the left should be educating the average person that conservatism is modern history’s greatest failure. Yes, really. The two most conservative societies in the rich world are America and Britain. They are falling apart, catastrophically. Happiness, incomes, savings, trust, meaning, purpose, the middle class — all these things are cratering (and that’s well before a pandemic, over the last few decades.) Meanwhile, elites have looted society wholesale, crackpots run it, and the average person has more or less given up on the whole mess. Meanwhile, in nations like Canada and New Zealand — exemplars of social democracy — living standards rise like clockwork, every single year. See the point? It’s not some mere political opinion that conservatism is a failure as a model of socioeconomy: it’s an easily observable empirical fact.

The left badly — badly — needs to educate people about this fact. That it’s a reality, not an opinion. That Anglos, especially, are living in failed societies, where the average person now, like a Soviet, faces chronic shortages of basic goods, like medicine, healthcare, or even decent food. But how can the left educate anyone about this fact…when it’s too busy picking ideological battles among its own…when it’s own angry young extremists are leading the charge into battle…but against their own side? When all this infighting is over tiny, tiny points of abstruse theories in moldy books nobody really reads, because they don’t have much to say at all, anyways?

Who’s left to educate the average person? Hence, a Bernie or a Corbyn never win mainstream appeal. Precisely because their movement doesn’t care.

If anything, their movement seems to be built on a kind of smug mockery of mainstream appeal. As if to say: “Ha! Look at those schmucks, those squares!! See how much smarter we are!! We know the truth!!” I get it. It’s nice to feel superior. But you cannot build a working political coalition this way.

And that is the problem here, in a nutshell — the second and larger one.

You cannot build a working political coalition on the values of infighting, hostility, aggression, purity-testing, mocking and attacking your own allies and partners and friends, smug superiority, cynicism, and theorizing about the equivalent of medieval angels on pinheads. Nobody much will follow you, even if they believe you. Because in the end, you have only demoralized and dispirited and hurt them.

You have not risen to the left’s first challenge: inspiring and elevating people, moving them in positive ways to action.

The result is then obvious: when it comes time to vote, nobody shows up for your side. The hardcore fringe of angry young things has already got its narcissistic reward, by insulting and attacking everyone else. Everyone else is now alienated. Even the fringe barely bothers showing up. The mainstream? It wrote you off, long ago. That is the story of Jeremy and Bernie both.

You cannot build a working political coalition on the values that Bernie’s and Jeremy’s movements both tried to. Aggression, hostility, rage, infighting, theorizing — this is the stuff of student politics. Of, as the former deputy Labour leader Tom Watson said, of protest movements. Sure, making people angry and abusive gets them to protest. Getting them to vote? It’s a much much harder job than that. How hard?

What does it take to really make a successful left?

To answer that question, we have to remember the fundamental values of the left. What are they? They are not me and a hundred of my not-so-closest fake friends abusing you over gender pronouns or identities. They are not me and a thousand people calling you names for daring to express some minor disagreement.

The fundamental values of the left are these things. Truth. Beauty. Love. Goodness. Decency. Humanity.

Do you see much of these displayed in modern leftist movements? I don’t. I see the precise opposite. Aggression, rage, cruelty, public shaming, hostility, hierarchy, and tribalism.

These are the value of the right — the precise and exact values of the right.

I’ve lived under Islamic fascism. Do you know who the left’s angry young things really remind me of? Mullahs. And their bands of green-turbaned extremists. Yes, really. The attitude is precisely the same. No dissent is allowed. Any questioning is to be punished. We don’t build a movement through love and understanding and enlightening people — but with aggression, hostility, and public shaming. What matters to us isn’t anything of real consequence — it’s idle theories about what pleases which dead man, and who can use what bathroom and why.

The horseshoe theory of politics is correct. The left has in many ways aped the right. It has lost its soul.

Do you remember what the left once used to stand for? An end to war — forever. Income and housing and healthcare — for every single person on the planet. No more systemic male violence — ever. No more hunger or thirst or disease — anywhere. Do you see the world-changing, history-altering magnitude of these goals? They weren’t idealistic ones — they are why institutions like the UN and World Bank and ILO were built — and made real progress at them, for decades. Do you see how noble and beautiful such ambitions are?

Now tell me why it is that the average millennial can recite all kinds of gender pronouns and theories to me — but can’t tell me how many people on planet earth live with safe drinking water. The answer, by the way, is two billion. Why is it that the average angry young self-described leftist can recite theories of identity politics to me ad nauseam — but can’t tell me how many people on planet earth live without decent food and sanitation? The answers, by the way, are two billion and four billion.

Let me put that another way.

The modern left’s priorities are threefold. Class war — in rich countries. Gender and sexuality, by which it’s become obsessed wholesale. Identity politics. A “leftist” will chide and scold me for not using the appropriate jargon and terminology, and maybe even sic a mob on me — just like a mullah. But I’d bet my life savings they don’t know — or care less — that half of humanity lives without decent sanitation.

Are you seeing the problem here? The left is now totally consumed by infighting over these three issues: class war in the rich west, gender and sexuality, and identity politics. It has forgotten everything else for their sake. But everything else is far, far more important. If you tell me that your gender pronoun hurts as much as a two billion people going thirsty…my friend, any adult will shake their head, and walk away. If you tell me that class war according to some abstract neo Marxist theory — conducted with only the most correct terminology, of course — matters more than half a planet without decent sanitation…my friend, any sane person will look at you like you’re a fool, and walk away.

The left’s priorities don’t reflect those of grown ups. They reflect those of 18 year old student politicians. Sex. Anger. Hostility. Rage. The smug superiority that comes from making everyone else feel small, bad, little. Forming little tribes, made of hierarchies of violence and discipline and punishment, meted out to those who dare to question any of it. What can really come from a politics like this? Who should rightly care about a politics that says gender pronouns matter more than half a planet without decent sanitation?

The left has grown shatteringly indifferent about the average person’s real problems. It fails to teach people basic facts about the world. It’s too busy beating them over the head with sticks made of ideology, and billy clubs of ideological conformity to issues that don’t matter to approximately 99.99999 percent of humanity.

Is it any wonder, then, that it’s losing, badly, over and over again, across the globe?

The lessons from Bernie’s defeat aren’t easy ones. They go to the heart of the left’s malaise. It forgot what it once was, what it stands for, what kind of world it should want, even what its values are — and became a pale shadow, a strange caricature, a ventriloquists’ dummy, of the right, expressing it’s values instead, from tribalism to hierarchy to abusiveness to narcississm.

So what can it really fight? Fight for? Win?

And that, my friends, tells me something else: expect a whole lot more fascism, before this left ever wises up.

Umair

April 2020