Betrayal?!

On the 30th of November the World Socialist Web Site published a commentary piece regarding Black Lives Matter. The substance of the piece is an explicit attack against the identity politics of the Black Live Matter movement and what is termed scathingly as the group's “racialist narrative”.

Noteworthy is the object of the attack: a November 15th release written by the Black Lives Matter Global Network, a full week after Clinton's humiliating defeat.

Summarised, the text is a statement of intent for BLM and a condemnation of the most profane and unholy in America. Top and tail, it earns the swift ascription most have in mind when they think of facebook manifestos: a politics of safety, a politics of inclusion, a politic of freedom.

The attack in the WSWS commentary [1] has gravitas; its criticisms are on point. It sharpens very distinctly the distance between two flanks in one supposed whole, and leaves no doubt as to the direction and shape this division will take. It accomplishes what it set out to do.

 But why now? Why the delay? [2]

The commentary is co-authored. A superficial search reveals that one is a member of the International Youth And Students for Social Equality. This is a familiar name. These are familiar words:

“The various pseudo-left organizations aggressively promote racial and gender politics as part of their efforts to prevent the development of an independent and united movement of the working class and keep workers and young people trapped within the dead end of the Democratic Party and capitalist politics.”

And as if there were any doubt, the WSWS logo is sewn into the organization's website.

The weight of this commentary and its choice to publish is a prefigured one. The WSWS has taken its sword to 'pseudo-left organizations' in the past, but a full body swing at the Black Lives Matter movement is a rare thing.

Or, was a rare thing. What has been an uneasy, yet necessary, partial-restraint on the part of WSWS has come to an abrupt end post-election. As revealed in the commentary and the Nov 15th text alike, BLM as a movement is quagmired in unsure moralistic demands and no real program for material change, less still one that reflects its 'commitments'.

BLM as a whole post-Trump are in rout.

Its members are either running towards the establishment's arms, or away in a moral hysteria.

This is clear even in the Nov 15th text: vague signals at a political mandate (unity) are belied by a cross section of interests and no clear register or language for action; any attempt at conjuring unity worsens disorder, as its members are less a political body than, what most grasp instinctively, a consumerist clique.

For WSWS and all like minded affiliates, this is a hallowed opportunity to draw blood. A multinational funded NGO has been thrown aside as its former donors court nationalist state-relics turned senior advisers. Such that it must be with a smirk when the authors of the commentary quote Ford Motors bankrolling BLM.

If they are successful in ending what is at its core a failed experiment in the fusion of capital and social conscience, much stands to be gained for the SEP and other socialists [3]. Whether or not it will end the charade of Silicon Valley's attempts to summon growth through its political puppets remains to be seen.
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[1] The commentary of the World Socialist Web Site and its news sections are not concomitant.

[2] This question may strike deeper than it appears.

Though the BLM has always been occupied at varying levels with internal differences, what has propelled the group and homogenized it is its media traction (and has subsequently blown it apart).

Very rarely do we witness dysfunction and internal manoeuvring defining BLM, as the leadership is almost always submerged in, and its members almost always shaped by, this one source: the media (democracy without transparency – the ideal bourgeois form). The predictable loss in its media support has probably collapsed its real capacity for 'independence'.

The delay right up until the end of November could therefore suggest that some level of leadership within the BLM has tried to reach out to alternative political bodies to consolidate the strength of the movement. Taken in conjunction with the November 15th text, this is all the more likely:

"We continue to operate from a place of love for our people and a deep yearning for real freedom. In our work, we center the most marginalized, and look to them for leadership. We fight for our collective(!) liberation because we are clear that until black people are free, no one is free. We are committed to practicing empathy for one another in this struggle — but we do not and will not negotiate with racists, fascists or anyone who demands we compromise our existence.”

A shame that WSWS missed this entirely.

[3] The SEP goes hand in hand with the WSWS and its various alliances.