What kind of electoralism is it, proletarian or bourgeois, idealist or materialist? Do they declare solidarity with the occupied third world, or do they sympathize with the naval gazing narcissism of the first world labor aristocracy?
The fact that Bad Faith believes "self driving cars are the future" and "we can go full clean energy without fossil fuels" tells us they're just merely woke liberals who don't know about the effects of resource extraction. How can you be a Marxist with less of an understanding of basic physics than papa Karl? It's impossible to be a materialist if you're as delusional as the Elon Musk death cult redditors
Fair enough, here's more direct criticism:
Bad Faith podcast (at least what I've listened to) seems to fall into the mentality of if we just talk about deep systemic structural problems enough, things'll change. Here's a bunch of distinguished folks to talk about it too.
Having been through two Bernie runs already, seems pretty clear it's not a problem of popular consciousness but of powerful interests within the Democratic party itself that want to squash any change despite popular support. And it seems to me that Brie and Virgil are two people who should clearly "know better."
A cynical read? Maybe. But that's my critique.
I mean this critique is discussed at length in the most recent episode so 🤷
It's good they're addressing this... uh, checks podcast... 50 episodes in. What do they say? (Or even the relevant timestamp.)
Gave it a try when it came out, I really did. Just found it pretty disappointing overall. Rev Left is more my thing.
That's fine, give it a listen if you like.
I don't think they're suggesting that simply talking about stuff will change anything. Say what you will about electoral politics, but trying to put new people in power is a much more serious attempt at change than just talking, and Brie and Virgil both put (varying degrees of) real work into the Bernie campaign.
How much of the Democratic base would you say were firm Bernie supporters? It's somewhere less than half, and possibly much less. We didn't see party elites kneecap an overwhelming favorite (or even a candidate with clear majority support) -- we saw them kneecap a candidate with plurality support, but who most of the party would move on from without a second thought.
There's definitely a problem of popular consciousness and a problem with the Party's vested interests.
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