In Defence of "AOC"

Over in America, the Democratic National Convention is in full flow. The left is desperate to use the event to try and force the Harris/Walz Presidential campaign to show at least some movement over the issue of Israel and Gaza. 

It is unlikely that things will work out that way. The Democrats have calculated that they have this election in the bag and that picking a fight with Israel and its various lobby groups is the one way they could derail the campaign. They reckon that the number of people who will abstain from voting for them over this issue will be insignificant. Besides; thanks to George W. Bush, matters of foreign policy are almost entirely executive decisions anyway. Joe Biden isn’t going to do anything, because he is a lifelong Zionist who has no problem with what Israel is doing. Donald Trump, meanwhile, is deranged in his support for Israel and so will apply no pressure to Harris’ campaign. Therefore Gaza will be a non-issue for the Democrats. The Uncommitted movement and the left will continue their fight for Palestine, but it seems they are fighting a losing battle.

To the chagrin of many of their number, left-wing star player Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez seems to have bowed to the prevailing political logic and is toeing the party line. She has not used her position at the event, which included a star billing on the first night, to demand a stronger stance versus Israel. Rather, she parrots the implausible official line that Harris is working hard, behind the scenes, somehow, to achieve a ceasefire. As a result, there has been a great deal of howling and outrage directed at AOC from left-wingers. The reality is that this move is entirely sensible, and she is correct to ignore the screeching from Twitter. 

Since she was first elected to Congress, it has been clear that foreign policy is not a core interest of Ocasio-Cortez’s. She was a local bartender from an ordinary background, whose political passions lie in helping working Americans. All of her best work has been in domestic policy. As a human, she probably does have strong feelings about Gaza - as anyone would who has seen the slaughter - but as a politician, it simply isn’t in her wheelhouse. 

To a certain kind of leftist, this is the most grievous of moral crimes. An irritating tendency has developed on the activist left (probably due to the outsized role of social media in forming left-wing discourse) which regards constant, loud, performative moral outrage over “imperialism” as the singular qualification for a good socialist. In light of Israel’s wretched assault on the Palestinian people, this fever has reached a pitch. The only thing that matters is that you are loudly anti-Israeli at all times. 

I, personally, have no problem going along with this. I could condemn the Israelis and their mad, infanticidal frenzy, and the USA and UK for abetting it, all day. But then I'm not a politician with a mission, a strategy or a broader responsibility to a cause. Ocasio-Cortez’s mission is to fight for change for the working poor of the USA. I think it is a good mission. Picking a fight with AIPAC and the Zionist element of the Democratic Party endangers that mission, as other Congresspeople have found out. This risk is only worth taking if Ocasio-Cortez believes that her "speaking out" on Gaza will effect some actual political change on the issue. There is no evidence that it will. Do her Twitter critics believe that AOC "speaking out" at the Democratic Convention would prompt Biden and Harris to change course? Of course not. So she risks losing her seat and thereby severely hampering the socialist movement, for what? Plaudits from podcasters? 

Ocasio-Cortez has correctly calculated that her position is tenuous and that she risks losing it for no measurable moral or political gain. Cori Bush, Jamaal Bowman et. al. are defeated, gone, into the dustbin of history. They will probably play no further role in the fight for justice. They picked an unwinnable fight over the issue of Gaza, where the potential losses were materially catastrophic, while the potential gains were abstract and self-regarding: an individualistic sense of moral rectitude, the approval of their peers. 

Crude utilitarian logic, I suppose. But that is the logic of political power. It cannot be otherwise - particularly if you are a Marxist. It is very amusing to see hammer-and-sickle types trade in such wide-eyed idealism when the mood takes them. AOC's hard-headedness is admirable. It can't have been easy for her to eat shit and parrot this absurd party line. She must have known she would look ridiculous and would draw fire from it from her own supporters. But she did it, because it was the rational and strategic move.   

It is important and politically wise, of course, to campaign on the great moral outrages of history as they are happening. But consistent advocacy for, and delivery on, issues that affect working people in their day-to-day are the bread and butter of a successful socialist movement. AOC and Sanders do that very well. They are of tremendous value to the left and tearing them down over their inaction on the issue of Israel serves no rational purpose. It is to their credit that they stay in their lane; seeing themselves merely as part of something larger than themselves, instead of a Great Man or Woman of history. They are domestic policy specialists. They play their part well and that is enough for them. 

Furthermore, I find something terribly problematic about the fetishisation, above all other things, of foreign policy and “anti-imperialism” on the left. It speaks, I think, to a bourgeois pathology within the movement. Foreign policy issues are exciting, earth-shattering, dramatic. They are, frankly, more interesting than the rather quotidian matter of putting food on the tables of working people. Foreign policy is the province of princes and statesmen, not bean-counting bureaucrats. What did Machiavelli write on the matter of workplace dispute resolution? Nothing, of course! 

People with media careers and expensive Master’s degrees from nice colleges, who usually have a wealthy family with capital to fall back on, love to throw around moralistic terminology like “social fascism” when left-wing movements begin to prioritise domestic policy concerns. You often hear American leftists use these terms to dismiss and deride European social democratic movements, which alleviated the poverty of their people and delivered health and education to millions, but who foolishly and irresponsibly neglected to overthrow the American Empire. Decades of hard-fought activism by trade unions and working people is cast aside and reduced to nothing, without even cursory study, by self-important, leftier-than-thou college grads. 

When socialism is merely an abstract moral cause, it is all-too-easy to fall into idealism, and the bourgeois practice of doling out head-pats to the downtrodden based on whose story is most tragic and urgent. Today, a Gazan suffers more greatly than an American worker and so is more worthy of support. Next year, it might be some other unfortunate soul and the Gazans will be yesterday’s news. If you’ve ever wondered why so many ordinary people have trust issues with the left, this is it. They feel that the left is dominated by a young, urban, affluent activist core who will toss their needs to one side as soon as a more fashionable cause comes along. 

This mistrust and malaise is already a problem for European left-wing movements, and the nascent American left must work extra hard to avoid the same fate. I have often wondered about the idea that Americans might be constitutionally incapable of understanding socialism, because they have been so deeply indoctrinated against it throughout their lives from all sides, whether by bourgeois individualism, Christian religion, or the fantasy worlds of Hollywood theatrics. All these things encourage a deep and wistful idealism and serve to obscure the hard realities of material, logic and strategy. If the American left decides to cast AOC aside, it will only be grist to the mill that theirs is a lost cause. This lady is a person, not a prophet. She will never be all things to all people. But she is a stalwart for ordinary Americans who has achieved remarkable things in her short and unexpected career. And that is all she needs to be. So let her do her thing.