Radical left politics, not what you think it is?

Could we have a radical left politics that is neither a plea for a socialist state, the tacit of defense of bureaucracy and professionalocracy, the pseudo-nationalism of identity politics, a fascist nationalist populism (Trump is clearly that), or a timid reliance on defending liberal republican parliamentary constitutionalism (the Democratic Party's heroic stance against Trump, and the traditional center-left response to a fascism it is powerless to stop and so hopes only to limit)? I suggest the political philosophy of Michel Foucault: his thinking allows a place for opposition to any and all forms of domination, and never denies the claims on that score of feminist, queer, black, or anti-colonialist politics, without in the least needing to affirm whatever they may posit or try to enforce in the place of what they criticize and pose. His was a criticism of everything, and intrinsically, and on good argumentative grounds, refuses all tu quoque arguments and claims that one must admit what one is for. It also is incompatible with the liberal tendency to refer social criticism in the last instance to individuals, who can always be prosecuted, declared mad, fired, evicted, or whatever, while the institutions and dominant social practices and discourse would go unquestioned. I see similar tendencies in certain filmmakers, particularly Rainer Werner Fassbinder, who died at almost the same moment in the early 80s: a gay man (like Foucault), he criticized domination when it was done by gay men or women, he was unafraid to ridicule American blacks and even Jews. Nor would anyone watching closely ever get the mistaken impression that he was criticizing an entire demographic; he simply lashed out at every form of oppression. If such thinking is impossible in the neighborhood of any right-thinking liberal institution in America today, it is only because of, not only their own, all too obvious, blind and dishonest behavior in defense of their own profits or jobs, but also the legacy of a moralistic governmentality, which the West owes to Christianity. Its secular legacy is, as Foucault has shown, the dominant medical and other professional establishments which seek to keep in control the whole population.

It will always be said that anyone advocating such a radical position must really be on the right. Timid liberals who want to keep their well-paying jobs in the bureaucracies are the ones who say such things. The defenders of the casual and normalized everyday violence of the institutions that aim to govern the lives of as many people as they can, with many of their employees readily allowed to engage in sadistic cruelties (such as I have seen in New York public hospitals, most often by blacks, which is not a racist statement but the result of a sober recognition that the most oppressed are often the most deluded and the most given to barbarism -- which their bosses tacitly expect them to be the ones performing, and, as they are on the front line, the ones to receive the hatred of those they violate). It's obvious to me that the worst violence I could imagine being subjected to with any likelihood would be done by Americans enforcing Americanism (as I have heard doctors and other officials acting, wrongly, as bosses of everyone they can, blatantly give voice to), and, while they're raping or torturing or otherwise violating me, no doubt subjecting me to a lot of hating abuse in the process they'll make sure some of them are black, female, gay, or Jewish, and they'll try to use that against me. (On the last named group, obviously in some circles the most untouchable now, I note that in a hospital where I was falsely interned, they brought in a rabbi. He led a group telling people they believe in God, something that should not surprise anyone with knowledge of the history of American slavery (God talk in America is about obedience, typically); of course, he was a visibly right-wing rabbi.

They will try to take us out in any way they can. They'll use memes manufactured to appeal to American 'liberals'. If I am ever raped or tortured, I expect it will be as a (political) prisoner (whose political character is surely officially denied) and by one or more persons who are black, female, or queer, and they'll also have someone accuse me of anti-semitism. (Here's their bait: I criticize Israel. QED to them!). It will be Americans who would torture me, an American citizen and someone who does what he can to contribute to American society (though like all radicals on the left, I believe a good person has no country in the sense that they insist upon--which is 'loyalty', gloss that: obedience). And they'll pretend to be liberals. They've already done this to people. It's been more than 20 years now.

With left-liberals who are willing functionaries in the capitalist bureaucracies, I say what is at stake is partly what is it to be on the left? But they will not want to allow us to say that anything in the society we live in is at stake. For them, you are at stake. They kill, torture, rape, and imprison people. Good liberals do this with their military humanitarianism.