On my recent CCTV appearance, which I shall have up on the blog and Youtube in the upcoming days, I was unable to go toe to toe with Todd Feinburg (a local conservative talk show host for WRKO) with the idea that conservatives are copping out just as much as liberals when they call Obama a socialist. I could not get my point out because I co-host the show with a fellow vulgarian, Roger Nicolson, who unfortunately remains uninterested in the same type of political arguments that I am. As such, I am in the process of starting my own show on Somerville Community Access Television (SCAT) where I believe it will be easier for me to get my ideas out into the world. I will keep all of you posted on when the new show will air. At the moment, I am in negotiations with the access television team about the content and nature of the program.
Until then, let me make it clear on my blog that I believe the reactionary use of the word socialist on behalf of the right is as equally unproductive as the use of the word racist by those on the left. And for any of you reactionary assholes on either side of this fucking argument, here is why:
1.) Both words today are commonly used as generalizations: there is no clear way to define a racist just as there is no clear way to define a socialist. Am I a socialist just because I favor the creation of a third political party in America that incorporates the socialist concept of equalizing the political voice of those in the lower classes of society with those of the upper? Am I a racist just because I feel that the word nigger can be used effectively in satire and that using the word is actually a good way of opening up the discussion about race? I have a feeling I know how both sides would respond to both of these questions.
2.) Both words today can be used as a smear tactic: in this day in age of government bailouts and the United States’ increasing deficit, the word socialist has been used as a smear tactic against the liberals of the world in the same way that racist is used as a smear upon those of the right. I see no difference between the fear-mongering tactic of trying to label someone as a socialist (which creates fear and confusion among those who wish to avoid such a categorization) and the same method of disparaging someone as a racist. Either way, one is working to use fear as a way of preventing an honest political discussion.
3.) Both words today are used as blasphemy through a larger historical context of the United States America: the significance of categorizing someone as a racist or socialist is based upon a deep and long history. Let’s just acknowledge here the fact that a group of individuals who have since been categorized as close-minded, nativists known as the Klu Klux Klan formed in the southern United States years ago to strike fear in the hearts of white, Anglo Americans by making them suspicious of a dangerous minority group—a group they saw as threatening the power structure of the country. This same phenomenon has occurred throughout history and surfaced in the1920’s and 50’s during the Great Red Scare, where a minority group of harmless Americans (deemed as ‘Socialists’) were made to appear as a threat to wellbeing of the United States of America. It would seem to me that liberals today are more interested in using the word racist as part of a ‘reverse witch-hunt’ to dismantle the integrity of the right rather than they are in seeking to challenge the racist and classist mechanisms that still exist within the systemic power structure of the United States. While they are doing this, the right is committing the same fallacy by recreating a modern-day Red Scare, in which anyone favoring government regulation over a laissez-faire free market is seen as a socialist.
What I am simply saying is that words can frame an ideal, but ultimately it is action that changes the status quo. And weakness lies in the time wasted in an argument over semantics when mass movement is needed. As a radical, you only lose if there is an unwillingness to move forward. Clearly, both liberals and conservatives seem quite content with this current standstill.
As for me—I’m always in motion, Friends of Freemont. I’m about to get my own fucking TV show.
Power to the mother fucking people of the Free Movement,
Freemont Barrington
