RedBrownAlliance

There seem to be people in Glenn Greenwald, Krystal Ball, Jimmy Dore spectrum proposing a Left-Right populist alliance. I am highly suspicious of this as a concept. The questions are am I getting them wrong? And am I wrong to be suspicious?

A left-right populist alliance is a monumentally terrible idea.

The general idea of the “left-right” populist alliance is an old one, and is also frequently called a “red-brown alliance.” These have been tried in the past. What inevitably happens is that the left component compromises everything it ostensibly believes in, the movement just becomes straight fascist, and while socialism definitely does not result, the murder of socialists does.

The people who believe that red-brown alliances are a good idea point to both socialism and fascism as being revolutionary in nature, and that both recognize the colossal rot present in, for example, neoliberal society, requiring gigantic systemic overhaul. However, socialists and fascists have wildly different reasons for believing this overhaul is necessary and what the end result of revolutionary change should be. It’s sort of like going to the mall when you want to purchase cheap earrings and your companion wants to detonate a pipe bomb in the Claire’s — these are mutually exclusive goals, and while they both require going to the mall, only one person is going to end this trip happy.

In general, there are two arguments the socialist half of the proposed red-brown alliance make:

• The fash are just wrong about why we need revolution, so we just need to change their minds about this one thing and they’ll be alright.
• The fash are dipshits who we can exploit to get what we want and then drop like a hot potato.

The first argument is asinine, because it assumes that the core premise of the fash is revolution. It isn’t, the core premises are inequality and exploitation, which, um, completely antithetical to socialism. The first argument therefore is argument that mistakes tactics (or, worse yet, aesthetics) for core belief, and therefore is doomed to failure.

The second argument is even worse, because socialism as an ideology is anti-exploitation, and that second argument is “well, we can exploit the shit out of these people and it’ll all turn out fine.” The first argument is pathetically misinformed as to the core values of the socialists’ nominal allies, but the second argument is in favor of chucking the socialists’ own core values.

On the other side of things, the fash know that the socialists involved are a bunch of useful idiots who can be exploited for their idiocy, and then either ignored or executed after the fash get what they want out of the socialists.

And that’s just the end state. On the way there, in order to make the alliance palatable to the fash, the socialists are going to have to look the other way on quite a bit of the fash’s bigotry. The socialists cannot call it out every time, because otherwise the fash will up and leave, because the bigotry is the point for them. So the environment is going to get rather hostile for various groups, probably including (but not limited to) LGBT+ people, people with disabilities, Jews, ethnic minorities, you get the idea.

The red-brown alliance holds nothing remotely worthwhile to a socialist, and can only end in the destruction of a socialist dream. This has been borne out time and time again in history: you cannot cut a deal with the fash, and you cannot exploit them — all that will happen is that you will either become the fash or sign your own death warrant. The red-brown alliance is a terrible idea, and those colors go together just as well politically as they do in a toilet bowl.