Last week, while observing the nationwide strike on May Day, and also the performance of a sociology student from The New School on Fox News a couple of days later, I wondered about the possibilities and obstacles of reinventing political culture. I was impressed that there was a significant attempt to bring May Day home, and also impressed by powerful media resistance to significant change in our political life.
May Day is celebrated around the world as Labor Day, everywhere, that is, except where it all began, the United States. The holiday commemorates the 1886 Haymarket Affair in Chicago and the struggle for decent working conditions and the eight-hour workday. It is an official holiday in over eighty countries, recognized in even more. Yet, until this year, it has been all but ignored in the U.S., except by those far to the left of the political mainstream. Thus, the calls by people associated with Occupy Wall Street for a nationwide general strike was notable, and it was quite striking that there were nationwide demonstrations including many in New York, capped by a large a mass demonstration at Union Square Park, right near my office. Not only leftists were there. Mainstream labor unions were as well. In many ways, I found the gathering to be as impressive as the ones I saw in Zuccotti Park last fall. Yet, it did not attract serious mass media attention.
The New York Times was typical. It had a careful article on May Day in Moscow, but reported the American actions as a local story, focused on minor violence, arrests and traffic disruptions.
The events’ significance did not reach beyond those who immediately were involved or who were already committed to its purpose through social media. Where OWS broke through to a broad public in its initial demonstrations downtown in the Fall, it failed to do so on May Day in demonstrations that were both large and inventive. Beyond the violence of the fringe of those involved in the movement and the provocative actions of police, and beyond traffic disruptions, the first major American May Day demonstrations in years were pretty much invisible to the general public, other than those who were already convinced of their importance before the fact and those who were quick to dismiss and demonize them. The demonstrations in Zuccotti Park resonated. May Day didn’t. As Daniel Dayan would put it, the task of monstration, of showing a broader public, on May Day failed, and things even got worse, apparent right here at Deliberately Considered.
On May 3rd, I noticed a lot of activity here. An old post was getting many hits, and there were unusual replies being posted. At least at first, the character of the replies was upsetting, not with the deliberately considered tone. The post was by Harrison Schultz on his experiences as an Occupy Wall Street activist, and the replies were aggressively and vilely critical. -“They are just a bunch of little crying little girls. Grow up have some nads and get a job,” “Fucking Retard !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!,” “You my friend are an idiot. I’m I feel sorry for people like you.” “What a Dipshit you are. Good luck working at Starbucks after Grad school. RTARD!!!” and the like.
I was at first puzzled, but soon realized that Harrison had appeared that evening on the Sean Hannity show and Hannity fans googled Harrison and were using Deliberately Considered to give him a piece of their minds (if that is what it was).
I initially wanted to delete these comments because they clearly run counter to our comment policy and represent all that I oppose when it comes to political debate. But because of some technical problems, I couldn’t, and, after thinking about it for a bit, I decided that the comments should remain because they so clearly reveal a very significant cultural problem. They are a part of the Fox script, which I fear Schultz couldn’t escape.
Schultz went on Hannity and tried to do unto Hannity what Hannity would do unto him. Harrison came out aggressively, attacking Hannity for labeling him as a radical hippy. Hannity responded in kind, and for his audience, the exchange demonstrated the truth of all their preconceived notions about OWS and those who would dare to criticize the prevailing political and economic order. To be sure, on Harrison’s Facebook page, his friends congratulated him for standing up to the man, though some, including me, had doubts. Clearly, for the convinced, Hannity and Schultz were applauded by their supporters (with Schultz’s numbering in the hundreds, Hannity’s in the hundreds of thousands, if not millions). Clearly, Hannity solidified his viewers opinions about May Day and OWS. Harrison did not break through. The comment by David Peppas to the Deliberately Considered replies gets to this central point cogently.
The May Day demonstrations presented Hannity with an opportunity to vilify OWS and Hannity played his role. And the dominant mass media, such as the Times, didn’t recognize and show the demonstrations, didn’t even explain why they had been called and their deep historical significance. If I weren’t as a matter of principle the last one to recognize a conspiracy, I might suggest that there is one.
More on this later this week
Don’t Let It Bring You Down: How does one communicate when one is in a farcical wonderland?
“Don’t let it bring you down
It’s only castles burning,
Find someone who’s turning
And you will come around.”
-Neil Young
Jeffrey, don’t let it bring you down. I agree with you but I think that its not all as bleak as it seems. As you said OWS managed to invigorate May day in the U.S. And I do not think we should be surprised that this received so little coverage. Once you set aside a day of the year to designate something special you are in a sense incorporating it into the status quo. As I have mentioned before I think that one of OWS’s strong points is it’s ambiguity, discontinuity, irregularity, unpredictability, and transgressive nature. OWS, relies more on tactics, not strategies. When I speak of tactics and strategies, I mean here something resembling the theoretical conception of tactics and strategies outlined by Michel de Certeau. I think for the progressive activist everyday should in a sense be May day.
We know that an official annual day, or holiday, can, despite good intentions, end up aestheticizing a political problem. Such special days can act as temporal entities that comfortable routinize which give participants the sense that for one day a particular problem is being addressed or reflected upon critically. In this way such special days, can actually instead end up papering over the political problem they were meant to address. One danger to the progressive critique of a normative system that I think a ‘holiday’ can pose is that that day can wind up containing transgression safely within its borders. In thus doing, it can shape the transgressive act, in ways that are not always desirable from the standpoint of the progressive activist. Any transgression, which normally adds power to the activist’s, can lose its power because the transgressive act is being performed on a special day set aside for such actions. Its like halloween. On that day there is nothing transgressive about transforming into a fantasy character of your choosing. A character which on any other day of the year would of course be taboo. Whereas OWS managed to really succeed in adding much needed substance to May day, your troubled feelings point to the great strength of OWS. This strength is its’ transgressive aspect. Its just harder to be transgressive on a day set aside for, well, transgressing. And what could be more taboo than demanding rights for workers in a society that so uncritically, lives and idealizes capitalism.
I also think that my reading as well as yours, of the Schultz/Hannity debate was rather pessimistic, if not cynical. Though, I think emphasizing the dreary nature of the structural problem is a valid dimension that we cannot ignore I think that there is always room for movement and resistance in these ‘structures’. For example if the stage was already set, which it was, when Schultz walked into that interview, there really was no need to take Hannity or that setting seriously. There really was no need to even try. Schultz’s pro-active strike, which you pointed out, was arguably right on target. That opening statement tells the audience that he knows from the onset that he’s in an absurd casino where all the decks are stacked against him . It tells the audience that he is aware that his ‘character’ and OWS has already been scripted and defined. It tells the audience that he is aware of the fact that he has been cast to play the role of a defendant in a Kafkaesque courtroom. It tells the audience that he is aware that any rational ad-libbing done on his part in this play will be perceived of by the audience as to be irrational. For example, how can you respond intelligently to someone who is trying to draw preposterous connections between OWS and the sanctioning of rape? Hannity would have brought that up regardless of Schultz’s attitude. Think about Alice’s vein attempts to use rationality in wonderland.
Given this, I think that Schultz’s approach was the right one. If you know very well that you are walking into a charade, a scripted play, a circus, which purports to be something else, then perhaps the best thing to do is tell that entity just that. Apart from walking off the set one knows that in such a setting one cannot refuse to play the role assigned to him. However, one effective form of refusal in such a situation, might be to tell Hannity this truth directly-more importantly the audience. In its most direct form this tactic would consist of saying two things to Hannity’s face; 1) I know and you know that we are both now in an absolutely farcical wonderland.2) I know and you know that in this farcical wonderland, we can be no more than farcical characters.
Best,
David