Extraparty assaults can tighten party cartels’ hold on the left

Evidence

Behind the current conjuncture lurk questions which American left-wing thinkers were keener to tackle in the 2010s, when debates about surrogate parties, dirty breaks, or left-wing caucuses maintained a constant relevance. Today, very few of these still stand on the mental radar of the left. As Tim Barker has noted, leading figures in American progressivism have maintained a highly Oedipal relationship to the Democrats. On the one hand, it is the party somehow uniquely responsible for a resolution to Israel’s genocidal punishment campaign, and on the other, it has long served as a hallowed institution of elite Zionism and the Cold War security state. Ironically, the result of the extraparty assault of the 2010s has been to tighten the hold of the DNC as the horizon of the American left. Heightened political emotions can also be captured by party cartels. After a decade of experimentation with semi-independent party activity, a Squad that still sees itself as an anxious battalion for a better Democratic Party is the main remnant of America’s left-populist wave. — Anton Jäger, Hyperpolitics, 27

Categorization

• XREF: This is the concrete mechanism showing why hyperpolitics produces saturation without durable change — repoliticization captured by cartels.
• SEED: The counterintuitive ‘you attack the party and end up strengthening it’ dynamic is an essay angle on why left-populist waves fizzle into reformist squads.