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I often find myself using terms like “the left,” or “progressives,” or “liberals.” While I have a specific understanding of what each category represents, the words swirl around differently in the world. For instance, I once found myself rolling my eyes at something going on in the world and muttering about “those liberals.” One of the people at the table drew herself up and sniffed, “Well, I’m a liberal.” I shot back, “Yes, well, that’s a problem.”
People sometimes don’t understand what I mean by “the left,” especially since I hold political positions on matters like gay marriage and immigration that seem counter to everything that good, decent folk believe. So, I thought this taxonomy might be useful. I’ve styled it around a basic premise: in times of crisis, people will act in accordance with their political beliefs, and those beliefs dictate their relationship to others around them and reveal what they think of the possibility of change (who should benefit, and how do we distribute resources and keep others safe?) I’ve loosely based all this on the apocalyptic scenario of The Walking Dead, the television show about a world overrun by zombies. As an amorphously formed group of survivors makes its way around a devastated world, we find out more about them as they respond to the crisis. For example, Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln) is always concerned about making sure everyone is safe (at least at the beginning). Daryl Dixon (Norman Reedus) is primarily a loner, but will still step up for the group when needed. Neegan (Jeffrey Deene Morgan), an arch-villain, is a psychopath who keeps order in his group with an unspeakable amount of brutality. All of them change over time, but the show is premised on the idea that a person’s perspective on how to operate in the world will determine how they navigate the worst of circumstances.
The list is, absolutely, in order of worst to best. I do very sincerely believe, as I’ve said here, in “Mariann Budde Is Not a Hero,” that liberalism needs to be killed and buried if personkind is to survive.
I will add to this over the years. Some might wonder why “neoliberal” isn’t included here as an identity: it’s a slightly complicated one because all the categories listed here can also be folded into neoliberal ideology. For more on that, see Walter Benn Michaels on left and right neoliberals.
I have left out all conservative groups because I don’t believe that they are the problem: the problem is with a left that refuses to stand up for what it believes, as I wrote in “What Is the Point of Politics without Ideology?” and “A Manifesto.” I want to think about how to bring about a more consistent and powerful left, and to do that we have to recognise the quirks and characteristics of each subset in the broadly conceived left—to understand when and how to dispense with some of them at critical moments.
Liberals. These are the people you want ahead of you, because the whole goddamn apocalypse is their fault and you should let the zombies eat them: just pretend you couldn’t rescue them in time when you heard their cries for help. Liberals ignored all the warning signs of disaster, including the fact that their neighbours in the slightly less expensive neighbourhood some blocks away were disappearing or eating their children right on the street. Because, “America,” and “We are never like that.” Their cousins and former classmates owned all the media, which is why you didn’t know about the damn zombies until they showed up, sniffing, on your porch. Also, liberals hoard all the can openers (which now have the same value as gold in the old world), won’t share, and they keep stopping for brunch, convinced that every zombie kill means that the entire apocalypse is over. No one will blame you if you accidentally kill a few along the way, “mistaking” them for zombies.
Libertarians. Oh, sod them. Fuckers don’t believe in anything but satiating their own desires, and they’re not motivated by the common good but with whether or not they can get away with literal, actual murder without intervention from the state. The apocalypse is the best thing that happened, in their eyes, and they keep trying to create their own breakaway groups—and have to keep returning because they can’t survive on their own in the wild. Just do yourself a favour and peel away from them as quickly as you can.
Progressives. Progressives are liberals who wants to be seen as leftists, but can’t bring themselves to actually give up on basic liberal ideas (other nations need our wisdom, we are “better than this,” armed struggle is a bad idea unless it’s American troops killing people in other countries to bring about peace, and so on). They tend to talk a lot, and, when criticised for not doing their bit, will always remind anyone in earshot about the one time they (entirely by accident) saved someone’s life. They refuse to give up on the American Dream, even as they pick their way through corpses and ruins.
Marxists. Useful, if you want a history of past times and insurrections, but useless with any practical advice. For example: they spent a couple of centuries talking about wealth and class, but never really got the hang of how money actually worked outside of the nineteenth century (offshore accounts bewildered them, right up to the very end of the banking system). They will try to “means of production” their way out of every argument (and, boy, do they argue, all the time; it’s a major reason they keep getting found by zombies, and why their numbers are dwindling). But they never had any real sense of why the world was ending when it did. To them the coming zombie apocalypse was something to be excited about, at first, because it proved some shaky theory about the end of the world. But they are genuinely eager to work: it’s best to get them to do what they can, but not talk with them too much. Also, they’re sexist jerks, even more so than the Libertarians. Luckily for the women they keep condescending to, there are no rules anymore and no one is going to miss a few headless Marxists.
Crunchy Granola People. They are slightly annoying, with all their talk about Mother Earth, but they are, at heart, good people and genuinely care about others. Also, they have figured out how to grow things in weird and unlikely spots. This is a great talent, especially if you find a place, like an abandoned house or barn, to hang on to for a while. Keep them around, but just be aware that they have a habit of guilelessly making friends with dangerous people and, sometimes, poisonous animals.
Anarchists. The only ones who will survive the end times. Here, we mean real anarchists, not the white college boys who picked up black clothes and fingerless gloves at Target and posed dramatically for some hipster magazine, circa 2003. These are the real deal, and they will most definitely not travel with the others, because they have their own rules and ways of working and don’t want to be fucked up by the silly, inane fights of other groups. You will never see them but, should you ever need their help in fighting a particularly large group of invading zombies, they will show up and kill more than you can imagine. They are all tight with each other, reveal nothing about themselves, and you will never know where they live. Because they’re not stupid: they know that you will probably try to eat their cats and kill them all.
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