How Elites Ate the Social Justice Movement throws into stark relief what a confounding writer Freddie deBoer is. A gifted and prolific polemicist, deBoer is an equal opportunity gadfly — there is something in his new book for everyone to hate (and love!) regardless of their political perspective. Don’t say you weren’t warned: “I have no fetish for civility,” deBoer declares, with uncharacteristic concision.
Progressives will probably recoil at the central thesis of this book: “In 2020, a year that was sold at the time as a moment of unique political foment — as a ‘reckoning’ — we saw the American progressive movement drift from the essential to the inconsequential, from the material to the illusory.” DeBoer is withering in his assessment of Black Lives Matter, #MeToo, Occupy Wall Street and the American social justice movement, which he believes has squandered unprecedented public support for change and accomplished precious little of lasting value. He argues that in recent years radical politics in the United States has changed “from being a matter of pursuing system progress and instead become a matter of moral hygiene, of saying rather than doing.”
But deBoer is not an anti-woke huckster. He is a self-described Marxist with a long history of radical organizing. When he isn’t eviscerating the social justice movement, he is busy attacking a broad range of targets that more moderate and conservative audiences hold dear. This list includes the Obama administration (“a conservative presidency”), nonprofit organizations (which “blunt political energy rather than focus it”), and the Democratic Party (“a center-right party”).
Among the many contrarian moves that deBoer makes in How Elites Ate the Social Justice Movement, perhaps the most intriguing is his discussion of political violence. Those concerned about political violence in the United States these days tend to focus on the events of January 6, 2021, when a right-wing mob summoned by President Donald Trump stormed the Capitol, leading to several deaths and hundreds of arrests.
But deBoer doesn’t mention January 6th at all, unless I missed it. Instead, his focus is on the prospect of political violence from the left.
In particular, deBoer looks at the violence that ensued in many American cities in the aftermath of the slaying of George Floyd in 2020. According to the US Crisis Monitor, a website that tracks political violence in the United States, there were 10,330 demonstrations associated with the Black Lives Matter movement in 2020. The vast majority — 94 percent — did not involve violent or destructive activity. But that still means that more than 600 protests did. (The US Crisis Monitor also documents that there were 2,350 right-wing demonstrations in 2020 — and that militarized right-wing social movements were involved in 11 percent of those demonstrations.)
Much of the chaos that accompanied the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020 was property destruction and theft. Very few universities, nonprofits, or liberal politicians condemned this rioting and looting. Indeed, many cheered it on. The Nation published a piece entitled “In Defense of Destroying Property.” And when the Philadelphia Inquirer argued in the other direction, in a piece entitled “Buildings Matter, Too,” the negative reaction was so intense that the paper apologized and the editor responsible for the headline resigned. “Defending riots became something of a cottage industry among progressives in 2020,” deBoer admits.
According to deBoer, calls to political violence are commonplace among the radical left because “the difference between our moral responsibility and our ability to achieve it infuses left organizing with a permanent sense of panic and disquiet.” DeBoer is sympathetic to those who endorse armed struggle, but he ultimately dismisses violence as “pointless and counterproductive.”
DeBoer’s rejection of violence is tactical rather than moral. Given advances in technology, the American government controls a vast stockpile of weaponry, surveillance equipment, and other tools that can be employed to defeat any armed resistance. In the US, political violence against the state is almost certainly doomed to failure.
Political violence is also deeply unpopular with the American public. Case in point: on a weekly basis, the Polarization Research Lab tracks public support for political violence. The results are telling:
Back in 2020, data analyst David Shor became a cancel culture martyr after he was fired for tweeting out an academic paper that suggested that nonviolent protest was more likely to result in support for progressive goals than riots. DeBoer acknowledges that Shor was basically correct — the rioting in 2020 didn’t help the cause. “The fantasy of deliverance through violence is one the left can’t afford to entertain anymore,” deBoer concludes.
Here’s hoping that today’s protestors are listening.