Archive for the ‘Liberals’ Category

Kelly McParland: Hurry up, Tories. The Liberals won’t keep defeating themselves forever – National Post

Perhaps Canadas soon-to-be-former leader of the opposition shouldnt have waited so long to unleash his inner Scheer.

For much of his term as Conservative leader, Andrew Scheer struggled to establish an identity. For a time he seemed just too chipper to take seriously. People appreciate good manners, but Scheers chipmunk grin didnt exactly reek of gravitas. Once the election drew near he shifted to attack mode, veering at times into insult. The change did little to help decide what to make of the Tory leader.

Maybe the knowledge that his remaining time is limited has set Scheer free. As the Liberals twist and turn in Parliament in the face of cascading dilemmas, Scheer has enthusiastically unloaded on the government with a mix of invective and scorn. Justin Trudeaus verbal response to Indigenous blockades was weak, weak, weak, weak, he said, a word salad that pandered to a small group of radical activists.

Maybe the knowledge that his remaining time is limited has set Scheer free

Dialogue is not going to pay the bills for people who are facing layoffs because of people breaking the law who have no connection to the Wetsuweten First Nation, he charged, so upsetting the prime minister that he refused to let him attend a meeting with other opposition leaders.

If that bothered Scheer, it didnt slow him down. He drew protests in his hometown of Regina for suggesting protesters check their privilege and let other people do their jobs. He blamed Teck Resources decision to cancel a mega-project squarely on Trudeau, issuing a statement claiming the prime minister was afraid of his own caucus.

The prime ministers weakness over the last few weeks has sent a signal to businesses across Canada that the rule of law will not be upheld, court injunctions will not be enforced and major projects cannot get built, it said.

He even took a swipe at the CBC for posting an article criticizing a kids TV program for being insufficiently anti-capitalist. Why is the CBC acting like capitalism is a bad thing? he tweeted. Kooky college professors are nothing new, he said, but the CBC should leave the left-wing bias out of its coverage.

Is this a man who, after spending an entire campaign refusing to clarify his views on abortion and same-sex marriage, finally feels able to drop his guard and express himself? The timing may be bad for his career, but good for his party: a Nanos poll shows Conservatives have passed Liberals in popular support, widening the gap that saw the Tories win the popular vote while losing the October election.

Of course, its not all about Scheer. The growth of discontent results mainly from the prolonged confrontation with Indigenous groups over rail blockades, and the perception of a government flailing about forlornly for answers on a number of fronts. Though Teck abandoned its project before the Liberals had to render judgment on it, divisions within the government were obvious. While other countries managed to evacuate citizens from China over the Wuhan virus, Canada couldnt seem to find anyone willing to let it land a plane. And after defending his actions in the SNC-Lavalin scandal by decrying the danger of foreign ownership, the prime minister seemed notably unvexed when Bombardier, another supposed Quebec industrial gem, sold off its rail operations to a French firm.

In any event, its rich pickings for opponents, and Erin OToole, for one, seems intent on embracing Scheers approach as he beats the bushes for support in the race to succeed him. OToole has been all fire and brimstone in the conflict over blockades. Intimidation and physically preventing people from going about their lives is different (from peaceful protest), he asserted. It is a form of common law assault and should, in the appropriate situations, be treated as such.

An OToole government would identify major railways, ports, highways and bridges as critical national infrastructure and introduce a Freedom of Movement Act making it a criminal offence to block a railway, airport, port, or major road, or to block the entrance to a business or household in a way that prevents people from lawfully entering or leaving.

OTooles main rival, Peter MacKay, has been more circumspect, seemingly following the dictum that its never wise to interrupt an opponent, in this case Trudeau, when hes in the middle of making a mistake. Given the extent of the governments troubles, both men, and others in the contest, should be champing at the bit to get the leadership question settled and turn their attention to a government that fumbled away its majority and now seems intent on botching its minority as well. After the October election there were suggestions Trudeau would have a year or two before once again facing voters, but this is a wounded government that would be eminently vulnerable to a competent opposition. The challenge for the Tories will be to prove theyre up to it, and soon. The Liberals may not go on defeating themselves forever.

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Kelly McParland: Hurry up, Tories. The Liberals won't keep defeating themselves forever - National Post

The Power Line Show, Ep 170: The Agony of a Liberal, with Damon Linker – Power Line

Damon Linker

What do you do if you are a center-left thinker confronting the train wreck of the Democratic nomination contest just now, with the strong possibility that socialist Bernie Sanders will be the nominee? Might we actually have an election where some liberals will leave the country if they win?This weeks episode takes up the scene with Damon Linker, senior correspondent for The Week, and assistant professor of the liberal arts at Ursinus College. And one of my favorite center-left writers.

Our conversation ranges widely from the state of the Democratic nomination contest and some of the central issues involved, to current book projects and currents in political philosophy today, and finally to a brief look at what ails the academic publishing marketplace today.

You know what to do next: Listen here, or download the episode from our hosts at Ricochet.

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The Power Line Show, Ep 170: The Agony of a Liberal, with Damon Linker - Power Line

Liberals need to stop pretending the president has no power – Yahoo News

Back in the Obama years, Democratic partisans had a contemptuous slogan for leftist critics of the president. People who insisted that the president could and should be doing more were adherents of the "Green Lantern Theory" of the presidency, after the comic book where someone in possession of a particular ring can do anything, limited only by their imagination and will. By this view, the presidency is an inherently weak office and leftists who think putting a more progressive person in the White House will make a big difference by itself are naive and foolish.

Ezra Klein follows this line of argument in a new piece at Vox, attacking what he calls "epiphany politics," exemplified in differing strains by Democratic candidates like Bernie Sanders or Joe Biden who argue they will be able to break through congressional gridlock. Just look at Obama, who "passed more and more consequential domestic legislation than any president since Lyndon Johnson. But it was a fraction of what he promised, and the bills that did pass were shot through with compromises and concessions," Klein writes. "He promised hope and change, but not enough changed, and that robbed the activists he inspired of hope."

Now, passing anything at all through Congress is always a challenge. But critics of Green Lanternism drastically understate the freedom of action that Obama had, especially in his early presidency. He had a huge opportunity to transform the United States into a better place and chose not to do so.

This reality is revealed clearly in A Crisis Wasted, a book by Obama fundraiser Reed Hundt, who also worked on the transition from 2008-9. Hundt was personally present for many of the key decisions and interviewed many of the key players later for the book.

To begin, Obama's first and most important decision actually happened before the presidential election, when he allowed President George W. Bush's then-Treasury Secretary, Hank Paulson, to define the priorities of the bank bailout. As the financial crisis gathered strength in 2008, Bush was largely checked out from daily governance, and Paulson took control. He wanted desperately to restore the pre-crisis status quo saving the banks while forestalling any serious challenge to to their profitability or political power. This approach ruled out any root-and-branch reform.

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But as Wall Street needed bigger and bigger infusions of government cash and credit to keep from collapsing, the bailout became a gigantic scandal, and Paulson felt he needed political cover. His own party would not support him, and Democrats had control of the House, so he turned to the Democratic presidential nominee (who was widely expected to win) for support. Obama gave this willingly, and whipped votes for Paulson's $700-billion blank check used to bail out the banks. Paulson's first bill was so outrageously lax that it failed in the House, but after the markets tanked, a second version that had slightly more oversight and homeowner assistance but was basically similar did pass.

The argument from the Obama camp was that it would have been irresponsible to force Paulson to tack conditions on to the bailout, even though he absolutely could have done so, since it was Democrats providing most of the votes. "We could have forced more mortgage relief. We could have imposed tighter conditions on dividends and executive compensation," Obama economic adviser Austan Goolsbee told Hundt, but Obama didn't want to be seen as exploiting the disaster.

In reality, it was a hideously irresponsible not to do so. The crisis put Wall Street in a desperately supplicant position, providing a brief golden opportunity to crack their stranglehold over the federal government. But by quickly restoring the gigantic profits of the banks, Obama preserved the tendrils of corruption that to this day reach throughout Congress, kept the financial system bloated and crisis-prone, and ensured the later Dodd-Frank financial reform would be pitifully inadequate. And by characterizing the crisis as a natural disaster-esque event instead of the product of Wall Street greed and crime, Obama made himself a heat shield for banker swindlers, burning away much of his political support and opening up space for Donald Trump to later claim the mantle of populist crusader.

Once Obama had chosen the Paulson route, his second-greatest mistake, the foreclosure crisis, followed naturally. House Democrats had included a sweeping provision enabling homeowner assistance in the bailout but left the details to the next president, who they figured would be a Democrat and hence trustworthy to use his authority to actually help homeowners. They figured wrong.

Obama assigned homeowner assistance to his Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, who turned homeowner assistance into another backdoor bank bailout. As Carolyn Sissoko explains in great detail, even after the financial sector had been stabilized, the banks still had huge volumes of worthless mortgage bonds on their books. Geither chose to use mortgage policy to stealthily move these losses from banks to homeowners and the government. There were two primary strategies. First, Geithner pushed Obama to renege on a promise to support allowing homeowners to write down the value of their primary mortgage to the home's assessed value. Then he refused to allow principal reductions of mortgages in his homeowner assistance program. Either of these would have allowed homeowners to write off hundreds of billions in bad debt, and hence blown a hole in bank balance sheets. Because Obama had ruled out a drastic restructuring of Wall Street, this couldn't be allowed.

Administration insiders were perfectly clear about this decision. There was "$750 billion of negative equity in housing the amount that mortgages exceeded the value of the houses," Goolsbee told Hundt. "Somebody would have to eat that money. For sure the banks couldn't take $750 billion of losses[.]" The result: something like 10 million people lost their homes.

Finally, there was the undersized stimulus, which administration economist Christy Romer calculated should have been as big as $1.8 trillion, but instead ended up being about $789 billion. Obama apologists like Michael Grunwald (who ghostwrote a Tim Geithner memoir) insist that the administration got as much as could have been gotten through Congress, given moderate Democrats' fears of deficit spending. That might be true, but it's impossible to say, because the White House never even tried to pass anything bigger, despite having 58-42 Senate majority and a similar advantage in the House. When initial economic data about the scale of the collapse turned out to be a drastic underestimate, the administration did not escalate its demands. Nor did they put a proper-sized stimulus before Congress and then point to ensuing market panic and the ongoing economic collapse to bully wimpy Democrats if it failed which is precisely how the bailout got passed mere months previously.

No doubt this kind of hardball tactic would have been thought "irresponsible" as well. But the insufficient stimulus was a disastrous failure that doomed the economy to ongoing economic stagnation, doomed the Democrats in the 2010 midterms, and delayed the employment recovery so long that Trump is getting all the credit. It is poor leadership to not exert one's authority to the absolute utmost to stop a depression.

The administration also rejected clever proposals to increase the size of the stimulus while keeping its headline price down. It could have refinanced state debt at rock-bottom federal interest rates, thus giving states greater room to spend. It could have created an infrastructure bank, which would have legally allowed 10 dollars in loans for every dollar appropriated. It could have gamed the 10-year budget window by spending (or cutting taxes) and then compensating with tax hikes that would not take effect until years later. But even though Hundt personally proposed a green infrastructure bank to Obama's top economic team, the administration rejected all these on ideological grounds.

Now, Klein is definitely correct to say that the president has little power to pass legislation in times of divided government. A gridlocked, non-functional Congress is now the rule rather than the exception. It will be difficult-to-impossible to pass any legislation through a Republican-controlled Senate, whether that is Medicare-for-All or Amy Klobuchar's agenda. Furthermore, as far as we can tell, the next president will not have a financial crisis to leverage in negotiations.

But the flip side of congressional gridlock is that power has flowed to the presidency over the years. Many of President Obama's failures in the aftermath of the crisis were in the details of how he chose to execute his authorities, especially who he appointed to his cabinet. President Trump has carried out enormously consequential policies outside of Congress like the Muslim ban, the trade war with China, throwing thousands of people off Medicaid, and the enormous bailout of farmers through aggressive use of executive orders and by taking up neglected authorities Congress delegated years ago.

Now, those policies are awful, but better ones are readily available. An entire recent issue of The American Prospect was dedicated to unilateral action the president could take immediately including canceling almost all student debt (which is directly owned by the government), creating a public option for banking, restoring the union rights of home care workers, slashing carbon emissions, and much more.

Would many of these actions be challenged and eventually roadblocked by the conservative Supreme Court? Surely. But to declare defeat before the battle is even fought is exactly how Obama approached his response to the crisis. As Trump shows, the courts move slowly, and you can put them on the back foot with a flurry of executive orders, tweaking the legal justification if one gets shot down.

And since Obama failed to rein in Wall Street, and the Dodd-Frank reform is being shredded under Republican government, another financial crisis of some size is surely coming sooner or later. The next Democratic president must be poised to seize any opportunity. They should be ready to exercise every last scrap of authority to improve the lives of the American people instead of fussing about propriety and appearances, or pretending the world's most powerful office is hemmed in on every side.

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Liberals need to stop pretending the president has no power - Yahoo News

For Ontarios next Liberal leader, the hard work really will begin after the race is over – Toronto Star

Unlike Iowa's Democrats, Ontario's Liberals have made a clear choice:

Steven Del Duca it shall be. Based on initial delegate selection tallies over the weekend, he now has a seemingly insurmountable advantage in the leadership race culminating with next months convention.

Not for Del Duca the muddled delegate counts that plagued the closely-watched Democratic presidential caucuses in Iowa earlier this month, pitting Bernie Sanders against Pete Buttigieg in a dead heat. No, he has run away with the race with roughly 54 per cent of committed delegates so far with even more likely to rally to his side as the first ballot vote approaches.

But even if Del Duca cant be caught, hell need all the traction he can get going forward. Luckily (or unluckily) for him, he cant take the party any further backwards than where it is today.

Unlike a Sanders or a Buttigieg, Del Duca is a virtual unknown. His greatest advantage is that he has a slightly higher profile than his lesser-known rivals in the race to date.

Like him, Michael Coteau and Mitzie Hunter were cabinet ministers in the last Liberal government, which went down to defeat in mid-2018. Unlike Del Duca, who lost his seat, Coteau and Hunter were among the seven solitary survivors of the election rout who clung to theirs.

But that in-house advantage counted for little outside the legislature of 124 MPPs, where Liberals were seeking not merely survival but revival. Based on his track record, and his network, Del Ducas path to victory took him furthest.

Other front-runners have faltered in past leadership races, victims of overconfidence or a paucity of energy. Del Duca suffered from neither those plagues, perhaps the most relentlessly determined and disciplined candidate to pursue a party leadership since, well, Patrick Brown conquered the demoralized Progressive Conservatives in 2015.

Like Brown, Del Duca does not exactly exude charisma. But he understands how to build a political machine (centred on his campaign guru Tom Allison, who also ran Kathleen Wynnes winning effort in the partys last leadership race).

Party members clearly wanted reassurance that their next leader could dig the party out of its hole raising money and reaching out to voters who have abandoned the Liberals. Del Ducas rivals have been playing catch-up from the start.

Coteau, a former minister of childrens services, perhaps came closest, finishing with the second-largest number of delegates on the weekend. He ran a spirited campaign that emphasized his own narrative arc as an inner-city kid who reached university and ran for elected politics, where he can be an inspirational speaker.

Hunter, a former education minister, emerged more humbled after having tumbled to fourth place in the race for delegates. The sting is that she was beaten out for third by newcomer Kate Graham, a failed candidate in the 2018 election (who finished third in her London-area riding). Two other long-shot candidates, Alvin Tedjo and Brenda Hollingsworth, were far behind the pack.

Now, notwithstanding his head start on a March 7 coronation, the hard part is just beginning for what may soon be dubbed Del Ducas Liberals. The preordained pathway to the leadership is harder than it looks.

There are still two major debates left, one in Toronto and another on TVO, that will put everyone on the spot: Del Duca cant merely coast to victory, lest he look smug; his rivals will be reluctant to come on too strong for fear of seeming pointlessly pugilistic against the presumed victor.

Motivating Liberals and attracting spectators will be that much harder with Del Ducas first-ballot victory all but a foregone conclusion. The challenge from all campaigns will still be to get their delegates to attend the convention in the GTA, given that the party is more than $6 million in debt, and many of the leadership campaigns are in the red after struggling with fundraising.

Even if he gets something of a pass from his Liberal rivals, the front-runner will almost certainly be looking over his shoulder at his more ferocious opponents among Ontarios governing Progressive Conservatives. Not to mention the New Democrats who are keen to supplant and suppress the Liberals after overtaking them in the last election, becoming the Official Opposition after Doug Fords Tories won government.

Today, the NDP is trailing in third place as the Liberal brand shows resilience in Ontario. Ford is proving to be an especially unpopular premier, according to public opinion polls that show his own partys support sagging.

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It is the leaderless Liberals who continue to lead in the latest opinion surveys, which might be a mixed blessing for Del Duca: the less they see of a Liberal leader, the less they dislike him or her.

The greater risk is that as Del Duca becomes better known or better framed by the rival Tories and New Democrats when they launch the inevitable attacks people will have second thoughts about their first impressions. Thats what the federal Conservatives did to new Liberal leaders arriving in Ottawa, and its what the provincial Tories are preparing to do to Del Duca.

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For Ontarios next Liberal leader, the hard work really will begin after the race is over - Toronto Star

How Lauren Duca and Other Liberals Weaponize Feminist Language To Uphold Oppressions – Wear Your Voice

Wear Your Voice x Feb 10, 2020

By Nashwa Lina Khan

In January 2020, The Independent published a piece by Lauren Duca entitled In Backing Liz Warren And Amy Klobuchar, The New York Times Rejected Toxic Masculinity- As We All Should. The articles subhead read Its not about women or men its about a feminine way of approaching politics that politicians of all stripes have shown, including Andrew Yang. Duca first appeared on many of our radars after Teen Vogue published her viral piece, Donald Trump is Gaslighting America. The op-ed was eerily similar to a previously published piece by Melissa Jeltsen featured in the Huffington Post which did not receive the same virality. Other articles acknowledge Ducas arguably laissez-faire approach to growing her version of feminist activism and analysis, also witnessed in her book and feminist journalism course that was rather white and not very feminist. This is not a piece on Duca alone though, however, it is about what she does and what she is emblematic of in these times. The #stillwithher resistance liberal co-opting feminist language in tandem with essentialism to replicate harm and spin false narratives is something we must challenge as an extension of capitalist systems that harm us all.

Discussing feminism is becoming increasingly difficult as it becomes more mainstream and distorted, manipulated, and rendered. This election cycle we witness this in a multitude of ways as feminism and its offshoots are frequently evoked as a rationale for dismissing Sanders and his supporters through arguments produced with little rigour and no teeth. For instance, when Duca argues that candidates have rejected toxic masculinity, her understandings of toxic masculinity are far from watertight, in fact, they seem to flounder in a rather shallow pool of second-wave feminist understanding.

The flawed and insidiously one-dimensional evocation of feminism, the divine feminine, toxic masculinity, patriarchy and other words in this attempt to form a coherent gender-based analysis of the current state of politics fails due to its disingenuous intent and muddied naming. For instance, after Duca names a number of economic factors, she still persists that the control of money and capital itself is toxic masculinity and believes a woman would be less capable of producing conditions of austerity. To believe, even on its most surface level, the idea that a publication like the New York Times one that has recently platformed race science, cheered on war, puff pieces on Nazis and so much more harm is a rejection of toxic masculinity, is to eschew any serious uptake of what toxic masculinity actually is.

Beyond solidifying a very binary understanding of femininity and masculinity that is flattened, Ducas statements erase the ways in which women can and have been used to do irreparable damage in the world. She writes, [t]he problem with masculinity is when it occurs as its shadow part. Toxic masculinity looks like this ongoing death rattle of the white supremacist patriarchy clinging to power. And, of course, we see the most grotesque manifestation of this sickness in the form of that demonic sweet potato who keeps us on the verge of World War Three because he cannot handle his own insecurity which would be embarrassing if our lives werent at stake. I think a woman is our best bet at beating that. I think using feminine pronouns for the most powerful person in the world could help correct our overriding tendency toward the toxic masculine.

I agree with Duca, our lives are at stake. However, she does not seem to care or engage with the concerns many of us live with. Duca writes that she has a gut feeling that a woman with a history of Democratic establishment voting is the best bet against a World War Three. Her feelings are rooted in an ever hollowing feminist identity politics where the most important aspect of this election is seeing someone who looks like an older version of her as President. Duca justifies her hunch that Warren or Klobuchar would be best for people saying, I think using feminine pronouns for the most powerful person in the world could help correct our overriding tendency toward the toxic masculine. This is not only a flattened analysis of gender and a meaningless evocation of pronouns, but it is also dishonest. History reminds us along with the present how women are complicit in war. Duca knows that the candidate who has the best policies for the most marginalized is Sanders and not Warren, especially after appointing a foreign policy advisory team filled with a diverse collective of warmongers. Much like presidential candidates, these writers offer language without authentic engagement or commitment to the ideas and movements.

This rise in a dogmatic good dog/bad dog approach applied to men and women in the most rudimentary sense is not rejecting toxic masculinity. If anything, such a dishonest engagement erodes the work feminism and disrupting toxic masculinity aims to do. Toxic masculinity is normalized behaviour in a society that is patriarchal, but what is lost in analyses like Ducas and others this election cycle is that toxic masculinity is not gendered in the ways they theorize. It harms both men and women. A mere refusal of endorsing men is not a rejection of toxic masculinity, it also does not enable radical progress or an authentic application of feminist practice.

Duca is not alone in the butchering of language and feminist theory. Neera Tanden, President of the Center for American Progress and a well-known member of the democratic establishment, evoked what is typically deemed as progressive language responding to a tweet from Brihanna Joy Gray who is the National Press Secretary for Bernie Sanders. Tanden tweeted Stop gaslighting. Denying peoples experiences isnt progressive. No one is saying Sen Sanders is doing this but Ive had death threats from supporters of Sen Sanders. And instead of saying thats bad or people should cool it, you engage in classic whataboutism. Disturbing. In response Joy also requested that the gaslighting of the most diverse, working class coalition of this race also not be done and pointed to Sanders being the only candidate to encourage his supporters to be civil.

Tanden, whose Twitter bio features the word feminist, is like many pundits and writers who are emerging to militate the progressive language activists, scholars, organizers, and more use to make sense of living in the patriarchal societies we identify as living within. What they consistently lack is a true honouring and commitment to the language they use and a rooting of the words within a larger understanding of interlocking systems of oppression. Their fixation on only addressing gender in a very binary way illustrates the disingenuous commitments they hold to any type of real progressive feminist politics.

Historically white femininity and womanhood have been wielded to justify violence. Knowing this and the nuances and complexities of gender we must not fall for these one-dimensional uptakes sterilized of other modes of oppression that impact us all differentlyinstead, we must challenge predominant hierarchies about race and gender-based analysis. To honour a gender-based analysis we must ensure when applied it is not simply reduced to a limited pro-women happenstance in a very broad abstract sense. Gender essentialism is not and will never be feminism and rejections of toxic masculinity that are by extension viewed as feminists are meant to be a political challenge. The piece by Duca, the exchanges feminist Tanden has with Gray and others regularly do illustrate a multitude of things in this political moment. This moment exposes how the intellectual movement obscures meaning when modified intentionally or weaponized by people who continue to benefit from the status quos reinforced by oppressive structures.

We are witnessing a stratification of power, class, and interests in the mutation of feminist language and theory by the labelling of anything we do not like as masculine. Furthermore, had Duca actually sat with texts and been serious about her commitment to the theories she espouses in any respectful way, she would recognize the trouble of working within such an essentialist framework while capitalism puppeteers us all. We must recognize the ethical component of this work as work that recognizes the broader struggles for social justice. We cannot solve the issues that plague us in isolation but instead must do so collectively.

People like Duca have a bottom-line with which they firmly believe is the reason for oppression and injustice in the world. For Duca it is gender, beyond the overly simplified understanding of it through such a bottom-line she can absolve herself as an implicated person. A mutation of her idea is that there would be no war if women ran the world. The microwaved understanding that feminism and equity are derived from half of the exploiters being women is reprehensible. What Duca is doing here (along with others) is evoking the theory and language around intersectionality and feminism and oversimplifying the worlds so many of us navigate.

In the article Duca attempts to grapple with the economic issues existing in America, she hastily attributes to our crisis of toxic masculinity which are in fact issues that are rooted in capitalism and its various branches. Stripping down feminism into meaninglessness for the petite bourgeoisie will never save us. Duca and what she now refers to as comrades are a mutation of feminism, a feminist cabal part of a project of meandering through what they believe to be a gender-based analysis that lacks much purpose or authenticity. In intentional misnaming, there is a paradox in positioning oneself as perpetually inculpable and innocent when labelling every moment a sexist or toxic masculinity moment. One in which patriarchy is and can actually be replicated. There is a danger beyond Duca we must be wary of. How they wield the language without a genuine commitment to various identities but instead an exercise in narcissism.

Describing capitalism, not toxic masculinity would do the work of gender justice as well. Gender does not live or exist in a silo, to be a feminist is not only to have a commitment to gender equity but dedication towards racial justice, class justice, dis/ability justice, and anti-imperialist politics. We must attend to all of these pieces of a capitalist system.

Wishing for imperialism but in a feminine way is one manifestation and danger of what happens when we do not understand the dynamic nature of identity and power. I believe there is a discomfort that some women, especially white women have with concepts like imperialism, colonialism, racism, and capitalism and by naming it toxic masculinity they are able to absolve themselves of guilt and continue to occupy a liminal space. Further, they are able to never be implicated in such moments of oppression or the beneficiaries of oppressive structures. Part of the work however is and will always be sitting with the trouble and discomfort.

Nashwa Lina Khan is an interdisciplinary community based facilitator, instructor and researcher. She is currently working on a few projects including a small chapbook of poems she never thought she would share. Her activist scholar work is presently focused on transformative education. Her graduate work uses maternal decolonial methodologies to make sense of how family law impacts sex workers, HIV positive women, refugee women, and unwed mothers in Morocco accessing healthcare services in relation to citizenship and nation. You can find some of her work here. Sometimes you can find her tweeting too little or too much @nashwakay.

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How Lauren Duca and Other Liberals Weaponize Feminist Language To Uphold Oppressions - Wear Your Voice