The Hard Nosed Business of Advocacy in Liberal Democracy's New Era: The View From Just Stop Oil and the Legitimacy of Correctly Manifesting LGBTQ+ Solidarity

 

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It is a rare pleasure to peek within the workings of solidarity building among civil society organizations.  Those practices, of course, have no ideology in and of themselves.  And it is likely that civil society groups across the political spectrum are constantly peeking into each other's practices, actions, and strategies for tips on how to effectively thrust themselves into the messy business of nudging a lazy and ignorant mass society toward the sort of proper attitudes that then spell influence for them and represent a step closer to the realization of the goals to which all this effort is expended. 

Pix credit here

Today's lesson is brought to the reader from the civil society organization, Just Stop Oil--a blue check mass organization with quite spectacular interventions designed to both get the attention of the masses (and their official minders in the public and private spheres) and then to capture  the narratives within which these masses are taught how to think and offered an orthodoxy of consequences for thinking "right." Fair enough--those appear to be the rule of politics in this new era for liberal democracy. Of course, any group can utilize these approaches and tactics, and as easily directed against as by Just Stop Oil.

In this case, Just Stop Oil has provided its audience with a hard lesson in solidarity building. Its target is a potential ally; its tactics a reminder that solidarity can as easily be crafted into a system of hierarchy as it can be framed in all sorts of other ways.  Implicit in the tactics used is the notion that with a limited attention range of a target group (the masses and their shepherds) it is necessary to "prioritize (that is to develop a hierarchy of value for just causes), and that all allied groups will have to ensure that they conform to that hierarchy. An important additional element is that this is an entirely one way street. 

The object of all of this solidarity building appears to be the organizers of an LGBTQ+ event, as well as an insistence on the deployment of a catechism and working style for the organization and its members that centers the issues and concerns of Just Stop Oil.  Again, fair enough, but instructive beyond this  specific manifestation of strategic hardball. There is, of course, no need to proffer, in return, a commitment by Just Stop Oil about their gender practices and sensitivities. That may just have to wait.  "Writer Jeffrey Ingold explained: “There is a story in The Guardian today about how London may flood due to rising sea levels soon if urgent work isn’t carried out on the Thames Barriers. There can’t be Pride if London is under water. “What is the point of queer liberation if we don’t have a liveable planet?” (here).

And failure to comply comes at a cost--the part of the pack that reminds one of a famous movie sequence in which an important person of commerce suggests that he will make an offer that cannot be refused.

As related in an opinion piece appearing in the UK press organ, the Guardian (James Greig, "Is Pride the right target for Just Stop Oil? Yes, when it’s letting our common enemy off the hook" 30 June 2023):

Queer members of Just Stop Oil issued Pride in London with a set of demands this week, arguing that “the climate crisis is the biggest threat to LGBTQ+ rights, due to social collapse”. This comes after Pride faced accusations of “pinkwashing” over its decision to make United Airlines the headline sponsor of this year’s event. . . . I am behind Just Stop Oil’s intervention, partly because it is dramatic and a little messy – there’s a kind of supervillain campness to it issuing a public ultimatum against a ticking clock.

Credit here (Christians! Shall Sparatcus tear down your churches? (1919)

In some ways, it seems suited to the times to once again think of these sorts of intervention in aesthetic terms.  Reminds me of the good old days of Berolt Brecht and his crowd. This is the world of the Freikorps and Sparakus. But it also reminds of the intertwining of politics and the aesthetic; also of its consequences in the theatrics of violence to which this sort of campness and politics as art might descend.  And there is a campness to counter-revolutionary tropes that might not be easily avoided. Perhaps that is the language of politics today--the theater of camp may have more substance than the mellifluous banalities oozing out of the organs of the administrative apparatus of social relations. That, indeed, would drive the camp in liberal democratic politics to newer heights--and profound bathos. These are lessons tht can only be learned in each generaiton that both proudly decouples itself from its parents and insists that theirs is the path of de-risking action from consequence.

But why engage in the dreariness of early 21st century political camp, when the 20th century offers a richer though much more meaningful palette.  It might, in that respect, be worth in ending this reflection, to indulge in the camp of Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny (German: Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny) (Kurt Weill music; Bertolt Brecht lyrics; 1930; Berlin), and more specifically Können einem toten Mann nicht helfen (Can't Help a Dead Man)

Können einem toten Mann nicht helfen.
Können uns und euch  und niemand helfen

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Thus it goes for civil society in Mahagonny. 

People only dream of Mahagonny
Because the world is so rotten ;
There is no peace in us-
No unity-
And there is nothing one can depend on.
But Mahagonriy Doesn't exist;
For Mahagonny Never occurred .
For Mahagonny Is only a made-up word. (here)