motherjones--2020-02-28--What’s So Bad About Politically Correct Art?

Political correctness has always mattered a lot to me .
As far back as I can remember it ’ s been important to be on the right side of things—further even : In my baby book under “ baby dislikes ” my dad wrote “ nuclear proliferation ” and “ caviar.
” In middle school I started going to anti-war rallies and spending my time arguing dress code constitutional law with the principal .
My high school class voted me “ most outspoken , ” which was a nice way of saying that I wouldn ’ t shut the fuck @ @ @ @ @ @ @ subject .
There are a lot more people who complain about “ PC ” than people who actually conform to the stereotypes , but I more or less do .
When I was a culturally engaged kid ( roughly ’ 96- ’ 06 ) , political correctness was politically incorrect .
In the Bay Area where I grew up we could assume most people were liberals , Democrats , and more specifically anti-Bush—if not necessarily anti-war .
But this was the heyday of the Man Show and South Park and Crank Yankers and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ last thing you were supposed to be was offended .
By that time conservatives had already been bellyaching for years on the covers of national magazines about the “ PC ” menace , gleefully comparing college students to the Red Guards and , yes , Nazi stormtroopers .
The script hasn ’ t changed much .
[ This essay is an excerpt from Shit is Fucked Up and Bullshit : History Since the End of History , published by Melville House . ]
Political correctness connotes not just the inability to let go @ @ @ @ @ @ @ have never seen a Will Ferrell comedy ) , but a weak character .
American history and humanities curricula still draw heavily on Cold War liberal ideas about the individual , and to be politically correct , we learn , is to surrender rather than cultivate your judgment .
Fahrenheit 451 , 1984 , Lord of the Flies , The Scarlet Letter , The Crucible , Animal Farm , Brave New World , To Kill A Mockingbird : When Americans learn about politics what we learn is that critical thinking means thinking “ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ parcel of tyranny , and attempts to get everyone to think the same way—or make everyone act as if they ’ re thinking the same way—are tyrannical .
What is the crime of calling a classmate ’ s shoes “ gay ” compared to the crime of telling other people what they ’ re allowed to say ?
It is , we are told , a slippery slope to Hitler .
The object of political correctness is rarely politics itself , at least not the formal kind .
The “ politics ” cancels @ @ @ @ @ @ @ be politically correct .
The object is instead cultural , discursive , aesthetic .
Political correctness is when you bring politics into spheres where it doesn ’ t belong , where it edges out judgment ( or non-judgmental taste and tradition ) .
Politics is about picking between options and letting yourself be counted on one side or the other , while judgment and taste are where and how we define ourselves as individuals .
And only as judging , tasting individuals are we capable of delegating our judgment by vote .
Political @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and the democracy that depends on it .
That is , as I understand it , the strongest version of the argument against political correctness .
It is fundamentally a liberal argument in the classical sense , which helps explain why some of the strongest and most consistent reactions against PC come from one-tick-left-or-right-of-center pundits like Jonathan Chait and David Brooks .
The issue among progressives and conservatives is where the lines of separation between spheres should be , which helps explain why the story of a gay wedding cake—a private baked good @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is also now a civil right—has acquired outlandishly large significance .
Discrimination is a synonym for both judgment and taste , and the long conservative fight for the right to discriminate against is about more than organizing oppression , it ’ s about preserving that capacity .
Conservatives can be politically correct , too , as liberals like to remind them .
When they defended the criminalization of homosexuality , for example , they extended the realm of politics into the bedroom .
The fight to ban abortion is likewise an intrusion of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ libertarians of the Reason magazine type consistently oppose political correctness of both kinds , defending the right to our taste in both cake customers and sex acts .
But though the unrealistically fair-minded see the political spectrum as a horseshoe , when we ’ re talking political correctness , we ’ re talking about the left .
Where libertarians want to shrink the realm of the political as small as possible , for the PC , “ everything is political.
” This was a repeated complaint in John Taylor ’ s 1991 New @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Correct ?
” The noted academic taste-and-judgment fanatic Stanley Fish is overly fond of the “ Is everything political ?
” phrase , using it in op-eds year after year to argue against politics in the classroom .
The lament “ everything is political now ” turns up 1,180 results on Google , including the Chicago Tribune headline gem : “ Everything is political these days , even the moon landing.
” But who are the people who really do believe that everything is political ?
If you ask the average conservative , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ correctness starts with Soviet Russia , more specifically Josef Stalin .
On one level this story is simply wrong .
But on a deeper , more important level , it ’ s complicatedly wrong .
Marching the political into “ all that exists ” truly is part of the Marxist plot , from the factory to the family ( “ Do you charge us with wanting to stop the exploitation of children by their parents ?
” says the Manifesto , “ To this crime we plead guilty.
” ) Succeeding waves of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ by occasionally finding Marx himself politically incorrect , extending his analysis even further into society in accordance with the method .
“ Cultural Marxism ” has no particular meaning within the tradition of Marxist thought , whereas it does have a noted history as a code phrase on the antisemitic right .
Lately it ’ s become a sort of harder-core synonym for political correctness , one that evinces a familiarity with far-right politics rather than garden-variety annoyance at college students .
And yet , I admit , there ’ s some validity @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the one about political correctness—is that Marxists want to subject every facet of society to politics , including the cultural sphere , which liberals ( from right to left ) believe is properly a realm of individuality .
Here ’ s how we might imagine they understand the cultural Marxist slippery slope : Instead of judging a comedian based on how funny they are , cultural Marxists want to judge adherence to a political line , which isn ’ t really judgment at all , it ’ s verification .
At that point @ @ @ @ @ @ @ or consumers or even people , we become bureaucrats , always looking for a condemnatory box to check .
Slowly and then quickly cultural producers are incentivized and forced to conform , and we ’ re left in a desert of art so sycophantic it barely deserves the title .
With the development of social media and the contentification of everyday people ’ s regular speech we have a greater awareness of the role we all play in forming culture .
What separated earlier generations of professional artists and critics from the amateurs @ @ @ @ @ @ @ online could go viral .
This is occasionally thrilling for everyone involved ( see : Lil Nas X ) , but it also makes more of us subject to expectations and pressures of political correctness that used to be reserved for public speakers .
And if we ’ re deprived of a space beyond politics we can ’ t develop the courage or ability to exercise judgment , and we become the most dangerous kinds of citizens : all political allegiance , no critical thought .
This vision of life without thought is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in school , along with social-contract theory , which is taught as fact .
Politics is where we surrender our freedom to the state in return for a vote , yes , but also a retained freedom in the spheres of judgment and taste , which is where individuality and creativity thrive .
The trade is between each individual and society as embodied in the nation : There are laws , but otherwise no one can tell you anything .
On the other hand , Marxists , we ’ re told , don @ @ @ @ @ @ @ all .
Everything must be sacrificed to the collective .
Under capitalism there ’ s no movie set that ’ s not a workplace , no marriage that ’ s not a workplace , no classroom that ’ s not a workplace .
All is bathed in the light of that particular hue .
If that sounds unfortunate or monotonous , it should .
As Americans we ’ re taught to see that rosy light as an eternal sunset , history and struggle being put to bed , liberal democracy , the foundation @ @ @ @ @ @ @ see a red dawn , a storm rising on a new day .
Any mode of production based on exploitation is unstable and rife with conflict .
( In order to use Marxist analysis without drawing attention to it , sociologists often say “ conflict theory ” instead . )
Owners try to get the most out of their workers and workers try to get the most out of life , goals that are fundamentally at odds .
The sparks from these grinding gears light the whole world.Despite what you may have heard @ @ @ @ @ @ @ But unlike liberals ( in both red and blue flavors ) , we don ’ t understand the world via the existential individual ’ s relationship to society .
Recorded human history is the history of class conflict , and every child is born into a specific historical moment and into a specific position within that specific moment .
Societies , we Marxists believe , have their characters determined by their relations of production , sometimes called society ’ s “ base.
” Feudal society was feudal , and capitalist society—under the first @ @ @ @ @ @ @ That means , in the simplest version , that the conflict between workers and owners is what structures the rest .
“ It is as though light of a particular hue were cast upon everything , ” Marx writes , “ tingeing all other colors and modifying their specific features.
” Upon everything .
If everything is properly understood as political—that is to say , engaged one way or another in the all-consuming struggle that defines society—how do we tell what ’ s on the right side ?
We ’ re taught to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ thought , where all that ’ s necessary is to verify adherence to the latest in PC phraseology .
With a socialist party it ’ s even easier : agree with the Party .
But Marxism is about constant criticism , and the most vibrant contemporary schools of thought emerge in part out of criticisms of the Soviet system .
And not , like say Camus or Orwell , from within the liberal tradition .
The visual arts are a frequent subject of anti-PC complaint , with conservatives fearmongering about the bland uniformity @ @ @ @ @ @ @ art is easy , they say , so if we judge art according to its political correctness , we surrender the lens of quality .
John Berger confounds this view .
Berger is one of the few great critics who is also universally acclaimed as a great artist .
With novels like G. , To The Wedding , and the Into Their Labors trilogy , Berger proved himself skilled beyond doubt , and his Ways of Seeing ( and its BBC adaptation ) is perhaps the single most influential work of English-language art @ @ @ @ @ @ @ resolutely politically correct , to a degree that sometimes shocked his liberal peers .
In a debate with British art historian Benedict Nicolson over the work of Italian socialist painter Renato Guttuso , Berger is rigid : Nicolson finds it hard to believe Berger is actually saying what he ’ s saying .
How can an artist of Berger ’ s capacity—never mind an art critic of his ability—talk about a universal standard for judging quality ?
How can someone who crafts fictions at the highest level talk of “ objective reality ” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ complaint that Guttuso would “ never depict corruption among the workers ” because to do so would be contrary to the painter ’ s politics , Berger answers it would be contrary to the truth : Not individuals but classes .
This is what Berger means by “ objective ” : more than the accurate story of something that happened , it ’ s about grasping the class struggles that structure the world .
The best an artist who misunderstands the objective truth of their society can hope for , as Berger writes @ @ @ @ @ @ @ his talent will reveal how it itself has been wasted.
” It ’ s a difference in task akin to that between “ blowing smoke rings and struggling like a wainwright to fashion a wheel that will turn.
” Content to blow smoke rings , Pollock ’ s drip paintings are politically incorrect because he fails to develop the significance of his subject .
Berger never joined the Communist Party and he maintained a deep contempt for state bureaucracy .
His PC model was not passed down from above .
Rather it came @ @ @ @ @ @ @ method to the interpretation of culture .
It ’ s not quite as easy as it sounds .
In 1972 , the 24 year old Chilean artist , poet , and activist Cecilia Vicuña began work on a series of four paintings called Héroes de la Revolución .
The democratic socialist government of Salvador Allende was in power , and Vicuña , like our stereotype of a good PC painter , produced portraits of socialist icons : Marx , Lenin , Fidel Castro meeting Allende , and left-wing Chilean folklorist Violeta Parra .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ realist works we ’ ve come to expect .
Her Marx stands outsized on an aqua-green hill , the trees behind him purple .
He is dignified , besuited with his hair in a white mane , a steady look toward the horizon .
Above his head floats a banner with his name in cursive , flanked by seven colored roses : pink , yellow , and baby blue .
Behind Marx to his left , in the background , two thick-thighed naked women make out .
“ In order to exalt Marx @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ideas that dogmaticians consider way removed from him , such as eroticism , poetics , blues , jazz and rock , female and homosexual liberation and that I consider intrinsic to the revolution , ” Vicuña wrote at the time .
Even though she was an active member of the government ’ s party , Vicuña ran into some problems .
She told the journal Manifesta that the painting of Castro and Allende was set to be shown at the National Fine Arts Museum but at the last minute they asked her to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ two leaders in profile , large heads tapering to small feet .
Their right hands are clasped , with his left Fidel points to a butterfly balanced on Allende ’ s outstretched palm .
Below them is a garland of flowers and in the same cursive , “ Fidel ” and “ Allende , ” like a journal doodling from a socialist historical slash fic .
Their heads are leaned out and their hips tilt toward each other .
Allende ’ s background arm is naked , and in the original ( a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the artist ’ s book Sabor a Mi ) so was Fidel ’ s foreground leg .
The museum ’ s director told her that the right-wing attacked left-wing leaders as queers and the painting risked being misinterpreted as mocking its subjects .
Vicuña covered Castro to the ankle .
Vicuña ’ s paintings wouldn ’ t hang long in the National Museum .
On September 11 , 1973 Augusto Pinochet seized power in a coup , beginning his brutal reign of terror in Chile .
Vicuña and the museum director both went @ @ @ @ @ @ @ him fleeing to Catalonia .
Allende , after a live farewell address via radio and right before the presidential palace was taken , shot himself in the head .
He ’ s said to have used an AK-47 he had received as a gift , bearing the engraving : “ To my good friend Salvador from Fidel , who by different means tries to achieve the same goals.
” Vicuña didn ’ t paint any more Heroes.Who ’ s the politically correct one in the story ?
Liberals would probably say the censorious @ @ @ @ @ @ @ forget the artist was doing a portrait series called Heroes of the Revolution honoring—and she was honoring—Marx , Lenin , and her socialist president .
( It ’ s not an anomalous situation either , plenty of left-wing artists have clashed with left-wing authorities . )
Almost 50 years later , I think Vicuña got the politics right the first time .
My favorite of the series is Marx , in large part because of the color palette .
With the brown sky and blue-green hill it has a frolicking almost psychedelic vibe @ @ @ @ @ @ @ calm tuxedoed godzilla is Karl .
The world is transformed : down come the walls between seriousness and frivolity , between masculine and feminine , between thought and being .
A socialism that ’ s afraid of a naked leg or lesbian sex is a brittle thing .
And , as we learned from the 20th century , a moral disaster waiting to happen .
One of the more politically correct movies I ’ ve ever seen is John Singleton ’ s 2005 action drama Four Brothers .
On its face it seems @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the movie consists of racist dickhead Mark Wahlberg joyfully playing a racist dickhead .
Along with his three brothers—all four of them adopted as children by the same do-gooder—Wahlberg ’ s character seeks vengeance when their mom is murdered .
They trace the hit to local gangster Victor Sweet ( Chiwetel Ejiofor ) .
The turning point isn ’ t when Wahlberg ’ s character beats up Sweet and throws him into an ice-fishing hole , it ’ s before , when his brother Jeremiah ( André Benjamin ) reveals that he ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s henchmen , offering them money that had been promised to Sweet to turn on their boss .
Up until then the fact that Jeremiah had been “ in the union ” with Sweet ’ s guy Evan ( Jernard Burks ) was exposition , post-industrial Detroit worldbuilding .
In his political correctness Singleton brings it to the fore at the crucial moment .
And in a movie full to the brim with starpower , it ’ s Burks , a Black actor whose credits are listed mostly by occupation rather than character @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to his gangster boss : “ The one thing you forgot about me is this : l was in the union for a long time .
l ain ’ t never missed no meetings.
” There ’ s always some surprise twist in an action drama like Four Brothers ; how else would the underdogs win in the end ?
But of all the double-crosses and shocking reveals Singleton and the writers David Elliot and Paul Lovett could have picked , they choose the one that extends our experience of significant , objective @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of nowhere , but that couldn ’ t be further from the truth .
The conflict that structures society is not about gangs of individuals haphazardly tossed into battle with each other , as we ’ re often led to believe by action flicks , it ’ s between classes of oppressors and oppressed .
Victor Sweet forgets it as well , treating his employees with the vicious disrespect that ’ s characteristic of villains , and Jeremiah is able to save the day by maintaining his fidelity to the organized labor movement @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ?
Everyone likes Boyz n the Hood .
Nothing undermines the standard complaints about politically correct art more than the overrepresentation of committed Marxists in the various artistic canons .
There ’ s no shortage of quotes like these from names American schoolchildren would associate directly with quality and uncompromisingly original artistic vision , and I could do the same exercise with poets , playwrights , novelists , composers , musicians , dancers , actors , directors , etc .
Often , as in Magritte ’ s case above , they used Marx @ @ @ @ @ @ @ supposed to represent his thought .
These artists—there are too many to list , including whole movements , such as the Harlem Renaissance , that American pedagogy has stripped of their communist politics—held themselves and each other to the standard of political correctness , applying it ( as Kahlo does in the quote above ) critically .
To be politically correct is not to be self-satisfied or to rest on your laurels of compliance ; it is to constantly hammer at your own work , your own self , and the world around @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ something useful ” politically .
It means engagement and protest and weighing compromise and sometimes fleeing for your life .
Far from staid or conservative , it ’ s a risky , experimental way to live .
Political correctness ( as shorthand for “ cultural Marxism ” ) is politically incorrect under liberalism because it asks that we think of ourselves as members of a class before we think of ourselves as individuals .
Since classes are constituted by relations of exploitation , we think of ourselves first as workers or bosses @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in conflict , and colonizers and colonized in conflict .
( Looking at class relations beyond worker/boss is no violation of Marxist orthodoxy . )
We shape our judgment and taste with our politics rather than the other way around .
This is anathema to liberals , for whom individuals must think and act primarily as individuals , lest conformity overflow judgment , capsize meritocracy , and drown democracy .
Liberals find the idea that anything is more important than the individual , well , offensive .
But does the world treat us @ @ @ @ @ @ @ tell a boss who has just laid you off ?
“ I ’ m sorry the stockholders took a hit , but I need this job , and as you know nothing is more important than the individual.
” Do we each wander a lonely path , advancing next to but separate from the people around us according to a mix of skill and luck , like a board game token ?
Does the world conform to our judgments , or is truer to say we mostly get what we get ?
Is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ answer is the latter—and it is—then whose side you ’ re on precedes your individuality in importance .
The individual only comes out when the authorities are looking for a distraction , a scapegoat , or an excuse .
The significant objective fact is that we live in a class society , and until we don ’ t anymore , that will continue to be the significant objective fact .
To be PC is to acknowledge that truth as found , to recognize that we don ’ t each of us need to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ideas to understand society .
The task for communists is to work with constancy and rigor in our thought and action toward a revolutionary break with class society .
It ’ s only there , on an earth where people are not grouped for exploitation , where we can speak meaningfully about the individual .
We ’ re looking forward to it .
Capitalism ’ s “ particular hue ” colors everything on the planet and even some stuff beyond ; capitalists have wasted countless lives to make it so .
If political @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of class society which means everything changes , then by the transitive property of equality , PC means the end of the world .
When people object to political correctness that ’ s the real root of what they ’ re talking about : They think we want to destroy the whole world as their eyes have adjusted to it .
And they ’ re right .
But would that be so bad ?
To smash that ugly fluorescent overhead light would change everything , it ’ s true , but we needn @ @ @ @ @ @ @ dark .
As the politically correct Langston Hughes wrote in his poem “ Ballad of Lenin , ” one of the ones we don ’ t learn in school :

Political correctness has always mattered a lot to me. As far back as I can remember it’s been important to be on the right side of things—further even: In my baby book under “baby dislikes” my dad wrote “nuclear proliferation” and “caviar.” In middle school I started going to anti-war rallies and spending my time arguing dress code constitutional law with the principal. My high school class voted me “most outspoken,” which was a nice way of saying that I wouldn’t shut the fuck up about politics, no matter the subject. There are a lot more people who complain about “PC” than people who actually conform to the stereotypes, but I more or less do.
When I was a culturally engaged kid (roughly ’96-’06), political correctness was politically incorrect. In the Bay Area where I grew up we could assume most people were liberals, Democrats, and more specifically anti-Bush—if not necessarily anti-war. But this was the heyday of the Man Show and South Park and Crank Yankers and, especially as a boy, the last thing you were supposed to be was offended. By that time conservatives had already been bellyaching for years on the covers of national magazines about the “PC” menace, gleefully comparing college students to the Red Guards and, yes, Nazi stormtroopers. The script hasn’t changed much.
[This essay is an excerpt from Shit is Fucked Up and Bullshit: History Since the End of History, published by Melville House.]
Political correctness connotes not just the inability to let go and enjoy yourself (e.g. I have never seen a Will Ferrell comedy), but a weak character. American history and humanities curricula still draw heavily on Cold War liberal ideas about the individual, and to be politically correct, we learn, is to surrender rather than cultivate your judgment. Fahrenheit 451, 1984, Lord of the Flies, The Scarlet Letter, The Crucible, Animal Farm, Brave New World, To Kill A Mockingbird: When Americans learn about politics what we learn is that critical thinking means thinking “for yourself.” Groupthink is part and parcel of tyranny, and attempts to get everyone to think the same way—or make everyone act as if they’re thinking the same way—are tyrannical. What is the crime of calling a classmate’s shoes “gay” compared to the crime of telling other people what they’re allowed to say? It is, we are told, a slippery slope to Hitler.
The object of political correctness is rarely politics itself, at least not the formal kind. The “politics” cancels itself out—a secret ballot can’t be politically correct. The object is instead cultural, discursive, aesthetic. Political correctness is when you bring politics into spheres where it doesn’t belong, where it edges out judgment (or non-judgmental taste and tradition). Politics is about picking between options and letting yourself be counted on one side or the other, while judgment and taste are where and how we define ourselves as individuals. And only as judging, tasting individuals are we capable of delegating our judgment by vote. Political correctness, then, poisons our culture and the democracy that depends on it.
Under capitalism there’s no movie set that’s not a workplace, no marriage that’s not a workplace, no classroom that’s not a workplace.
That is, as I understand it, the strongest version of the argument against political correctness. It is fundamentally a liberal argument in the classical sense, which helps explain why some of the strongest and most consistent reactions against PC come from one-tick-left-or-right-of-center pundits like Jonathan Chait and David Brooks. The issue among progressives and conservatives is where the lines of separation between spheres should be, which helps explain why the story of a gay wedding cake—a private baked good linked to a traditional religious rite that is also now a civil right—has acquired outlandishly large significance. Discrimination is a synonym for both judgment and taste, and the long conservative fight for the right to discriminate against is about more than organizing oppression, it’s about preserving that capacity.
(It’s worth noting that any moderately close reading of American history shows that elected progressives do not fight to extend the realm of the political so much as manage demands from elements in the public to do so. As I write it’s been less than 10 years since we marched in Washington, DC, for gay marriage, and Democratic lawmakers were not running out to join us.)
Conservatives can be politically correct, too, as liberals like to remind them. When they defended the criminalization of homosexuality, for example, they extended the realm of politics into the bedroom. The fight to ban abortion is likewise an intrusion of the political into the medical. Strict libertarians of the Reason magazine type consistently oppose political correctness of both kinds, defending the right to our taste in both cake customers and sex acts. But though the unrealistically fair-minded see the political spectrum as a horseshoe, when we’re talking political correctness, we’re talking about the left.
Where libertarians want to shrink the realm of the political as small as possible, for the PC, “everything is political.” This was a repeated complaint in John Taylor’s 1991 New York cover story “Are You Politically Correct?” The noted academic taste-and-judgment fanatic Stanley Fish is overly fond of the “Is everything political?” phrase, using it in op-eds year after year to argue against politics in the classroom. The lament “everything is political now” turns up 1,180 results on Google, including the Chicago Tribune headline gem: “Everything is political these days, even the moon landing.” But who are the people who really do believe that everything is political?
Communists.
★
Hitherto philosophers have had the solution of all riddles lying in their writing-desks, and the stupid, exoteric world had only to open its mouth for the roast pigeons of absolute knowledge to fly into it. Now philosophy has become mundane, and the most striking proof of this is that philosophical consciousness itself has been drawn into the torment of the struggle, not only externally but also internally. But, if constructing the future and settling everything for all times are not our affair, it is all the more clear what we have to accomplish at present: I am referring to ruthless criticism of all that exists, ruthless both in the sense of not being afraid of the results it arrives at and in the sense of being just as little afraid of conflict with the powers that be.—Karl Marx, letter to Arnold Ruge (1843)
If you ask the average conservative, they’ll probably tell you political correctness starts with Soviet Russia, more specifically Josef Stalin. On one level this story is simply wrong. But on a deeper, more important level, it’s complicatedly wrong. Marching the political into “all that exists” truly is part of the Marxist plot, from the factory to the family (“Do you charge us with wanting to stop the exploitation of children by their parents?” says the Manifesto, “To this crime we plead guilty.”) Succeeding waves of Marxists have paid him the highest tribute by occasionally finding Marx himself politically incorrect, extending his analysis even further into society in accordance with the method.
“Cultural Marxism” has no particular meaning within the tradition of Marxist thought, whereas it does have a noted history as a code phrase on the antisemitic right. Lately it’s become a sort of harder-core synonym for political correctness, one that evinces a familiarity with far-right politics rather than garden-variety annoyance at college students. And yet, I admit, there’s some validity to the idea. The complaint—similar to the one about political correctness—is that Marxists want to subject every facet of society to politics, including the cultural sphere, which liberals (from right to left) believe is properly a realm of individuality.
Here’s how we might imagine they understand the cultural Marxist slippery slope: Instead of judging a comedian based on how funny they are, cultural Marxists want to judge adherence to a political line, which isn’t really judgment at all, it’s verification. At that point we’re no longer audience members or consumers or even people, we become bureaucrats, always looking for a condemnatory box to check. Slowly and then quickly cultural producers are incentivized and forced to conform, and we’re left in a desert of art so sycophantic it barely deserves the title.
With the development of social media and the contentification of everyday people’s regular speech we have a greater awareness of the role we all play in forming culture. What separated earlier generations of professional artists and critics from the amateurs was plausible reach, but now anyone online could go viral. This is occasionally thrilling for everyone involved (see: Lil Nas X), but it also makes more of us subject to expectations and pressures of political correctness that used to be reserved for public speakers. And if we’re deprived of a space beyond politics we can’t develop the courage or ability to exercise judgment, and we become the most dangerous kinds of citizens: all political allegiance, no critical thought.
Political correctness is politically incorrect under liberalism because it asks that we think of ourselves as members of a class before we think of ourselves as individuals.
This vision of life without thought is a caricature of socialism that Americans learn in school, along with social-contract theory, which is taught as fact. Politics is where we surrender our freedom to the state in return for a vote, yes, but also a retained freedom in the spheres of judgment and taste, which is where individuality and creativity thrive. The trade is between each individual and society as embodied in the nation: There are laws, but otherwise no one can tell you anything. On the other hand, Marxists, we’re told, don’t believe in the individual at all. Everything must be sacrificed to the collective.
Despite what you may have heard, Marxists recognize that people exist. But unlike liberals (in both red and blue flavors), we don’t understand the world via the existential individual’s relationship to society. Recorded human history is the history of class conflict, and every child is born into a specific historical moment and into a specific position within that specific moment. Societies, we Marxists believe, have their characters determined by their relations of production, sometimes called society’s “base.” Feudal society was feudal, and capitalist society—under the first truly global mode of production—is capitalist. That means, in the simplest version, that the conflict between workers and owners is what structures the rest. “It is as though light of a particular hue were cast upon everything,” Marx writes, “tingeing all other colors and modifying their specific features.” Upon everything.
Under capitalism there’s no movie set that’s not a workplace, no marriage that’s not a workplace, no classroom that’s not a workplace. All is bathed in the light of that particular hue. If that sounds unfortunate or monotonous, it should. As Americans we’re taught to see that rosy light as an eternal sunset, history and struggle being put to bed, liberal democracy, the foundation for free taste and judgment. Marxists see a red dawn, a storm rising on a new day. Any mode of production based on exploitation is unstable and rife with conflict. (In order to use Marxist analysis without drawing attention to it, sociologists often say “conflict theory” instead.) Owners try to get the most out of their workers and workers try to get the most out of life, goals that are fundamentally at odds. The sparks from these grinding gears light the whole world.
★
If everything is properly understood as political—that is to say, engaged one way or another in the all-consuming struggle that defines society—how do we tell what’s on the right side? We’re taught to see political correctness as a shortcut around thought, where all that’s necessary is to verify adherence to the latest in PC phraseology. With a socialist party it’s even easier: agree with the Party. But Marxism is about constant criticism, and the most vibrant contemporary schools of thought emerge in part out of criticisms of the Soviet system. And not, like say Camus or Orwell, from within the liberal tradition.
The visual arts are a frequent subject of anti-PC complaint, with conservatives fearmongering about the bland uniformity of socialist painting. Making politically correct art is easy, they say, so if we judge art according to its political correctness, we surrender the lens of quality. John Berger confounds this view. Berger is one of the few great critics who is also universally acclaimed as a great artist. With novels like G., To The Wedding, and the Into Their Labors trilogy, Berger proved himself skilled beyond doubt, and his Ways of Seeing (and its BBC adaptation) is perhaps the single most influential work of English-language art criticism. And yet, Berger was resolutely politically correct, to a degree that sometimes shocked his liberal peers. In a debate with British art historian Benedict Nicolson over the work of Italian socialist painter Renato Guttuso, Berger is rigid:
Berger: A work of art is moving in direct ratio to the degree to which it extends our experience of significant, objective facts. Nicolson: Come now! … It would be foolish to argue that Van Gogh was less significant as an artist when expressing intensely personal emotions than when gearing his sensations to some social ideal. Berger: I completely disagree. The most moving Van Goghs are precisely those in which his intense emotions are are applied to objective reality. It was because his own over-personal sensations finally smothered his vision that he killed himself. One day his work will be reassessed in the light of this fact.
Harsh!
Nicolson finds it hard to believe Berger is actually saying what he’s saying. How can an artist of Berger’s capacity—never mind an art critic of his ability—talk about a universal standard for judging quality? How can someone who crafts fictions at the highest level talk of “objective reality” that way? To Nicolson’s complaint that Guttuso would “never depict corruption among the workers” because to do so would be contrary to the painter’s politics, Berger answers it would be contrary to the truth:
Arbitrarily isolated facts can only lead to triviality in art…Of course, there are individual corrupt workers. Of course, there are decent bourgeoisie. But the fact remains that it is the peasants in Italy who remain undernourished, the working class who, in the struggle for their rights, get shot, and the bourgeoisie who connive.
Not individuals but classes. This is what Berger means by “objective”: more than the accurate story of something that happened, it’s about grasping the class struggles that structure the world. The best an artist who misunderstands the objective truth of their society can hope for, as Berger writes about Jackson Pollock, is that “his talent will reveal how it itself has been wasted.” It’s a difference in task akin to that between “blowing smoke rings and struggling like a wainwright to fashion a wheel that will turn.” Content to blow smoke rings, Pollock’s drip paintings are politically incorrect because he fails to develop the significance of his subject. Berger never joined the Communist Party and he maintained a deep contempt for state bureaucracy. His PC model was not passed down from above. Rather it came from his rigorous application of the Marxist method to the interpretation of culture. It’s not quite as easy as it sounds.
★
In 1972, the 24 year old Chilean artist, poet, and activist Cecilia Vicuña began work on a series of four paintings called Héroes de la Revolución. The democratic socialist government of Salvador Allende was in power, and Vicuña, like our stereotype of a good PC painter, produced portraits of socialist icons: Marx, Lenin, Fidel Castro meeting Allende, and left-wing Chilean folklorist Violeta Parra. But these aren’t the kitschy realist works we’ve come to expect. Her Marx stands outsized on an aqua-green hill, the trees behind him purple. He is dignified, besuited with his hair in a white mane, a steady look toward the horizon. Above his head floats a banner with his name in cursive, flanked by seven colored roses: pink, yellow, and baby blue. Behind Marx to his left, in the background, two thick-thighed naked women make out. “In order to exalt Marx, I wanted to associate him with ideas that dogmaticians consider way removed from him, such as eroticism, poetics, blues, jazz and rock, female and homosexual liberation and that I consider intrinsic to the revolution,” Vicuña wrote at the time.
Even though she was an active member of the government’s party, Vicuña ran into some problems. She told the journal Manifesta that the painting of Castro and Allende was set to be shown at the National Fine Arts Museum but at the last minute they asked her to censor it. The painting shows the two leaders in profile, large heads tapering to small feet. Their right hands are clasped, with his left Fidel points to a butterfly balanced on Allende’s outstretched palm. Below them is a garland of flowers and in the same cursive, “Fidel” and “Allende,” like a journal doodling from a socialist historical slash fic. Their heads are leaned out and their hips tilt toward each other. Allende’s background arm is naked, and in the original (a black-and-white picture of which is memorialized in the artist’s book Sabor a Mi) so was Fidel’s foreground leg. The museum’s director told her that the right-wing attacked left-wing leaders as queers and the painting risked being misinterpreted as mocking its subjects. Vicuña covered Castro to the ankle.
Vicuña’s paintings wouldn’t hang long in the National Museum. On September 11, 1973 Augusto Pinochet seized power in a coup, beginning his brutal reign of terror in Chile. Vicuña and the museum director both went into exile, her staying London, him fleeing to Catalonia. Allende, after a live farewell address via radio and right before the presidential palace was taken, shot himself in the head. He’s said to have used an AK-47 he had received as a gift, bearing the engraving: “To my good friend Salvador from Fidel, who by different means tries to achieve the same goals.” Vicuña didn’t paint any more Heroes.Who’s the politically correct one in the story? Liberals would probably say the censorious museum director, but don’t forget the artist was doing a portrait series called Heroes of the Revolution honoring—and she was honoring—Marx, Lenin, and her socialist president. (It’s not an anomalous situation either, plenty of left-wing artists have clashed with left-wing authorities.) Almost 50 years later, I think Vicuña got the politics right the first time. My favorite of the series is Marx, in large part because of the color palette. With the brown sky and blue-green hill it has a frolicking almost psychedelic vibe, and lording over it like a calm tuxedoed godzilla is Karl. The world is transformed: down come the walls between seriousness and frivolity, between masculine and feminine, between thought and being. A socialism that’s afraid of a naked leg or lesbian sex is a brittle thing. And, as we learned from the 20th century, a moral disaster waiting to happen.
★
One of the more politically correct movies I’ve ever seen is John Singleton’s 2005 action drama Four Brothers. On its face it seems like a strange choice because much of the movie consists of racist dickhead Mark Wahlberg joyfully playing a racist dickhead. Along with his three brothers—all four of them adopted as children by the same do-gooder—Wahlberg’s character seeks vengeance when their mom is murdered. They trace the hit to local gangster Victor Sweet (Chiwetel Ejiofor).
The turning point isn’t when Wahlberg’s character beats up Sweet and throws him into an ice-fishing hole, it’s before, when his brother Jeremiah (André Benjamin) reveals that he’s made a deal with Sweet’s henchmen, offering them money that had been promised to Sweet to turn on their boss. Up until then the fact that Jeremiah had been “in the union” with Sweet’s guy Evan (Jernard Burks) was exposition, post-industrial Detroit worldbuilding. In his political correctness Singleton brings it to the fore at the crucial moment. And in a movie full to the brim with starpower, it’s Burks, a Black actor whose credits are listed mostly by occupation rather than character name, who delivers the killer line to his gangster boss: “The one thing you forgot about me is this: l was in the union for a long time. l ain’t never missed no meetings.”
To be politically correct is not to be self-satisfied or to rest on your laurels of compliance, it is to constantly hammer at your own work.
There’s always some surprise twist in an action drama like Four Brothers; how else would the underdogs win in the end? But of all the double-crosses and shocking reveals Singleton and the writers David Elliot and Paul Lovett could have picked, they choose the one that extends our experience of significant, objective facts. It seems to come out of nowhere, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. The conflict that structures society is not about gangs of individuals haphazardly tossed into battle with each other, as we’re often led to believe by action flicks, it’s between classes of oppressors and oppressed. Victor Sweet forgets it as well, treating his employees with the vicious disrespect that’s characteristic of villains, and Jeremiah is able to save the day by maintaining his fidelity to the organized labor movement.
Was John Singleton a PC hack? Everyone likes Boyz n the Hood.
★
Nothing undermines the standard complaints about politically correct art more than the overrepresentation of committed Marxists in the various artistic canons.
The only way that poets and painters can fight against the bourgeois economy is to give their works precisely that content which challenges the bourgeois ideological values propping up the bourgeois economy.—Rene Magritte My joining the Communist Party is a logical step in my life, my work and gives them their meaning. Through design and color, I have tried to penetrate deeper into a knowledge of the world and of men so that this knowledge might free us.—Pablo Picasso I feel uneasy about my painting. Above all I want to transform it into something useful for the Communist revolutionary movement…I have to fight with all my strength to contribute what my health allows to the revolution. The only true reason to live.—Frida Kahlo
There’s no shortage of quotes like these from names American schoolchildren would associate directly with quality and uncompromisingly original artistic vision, and I could do the same exercise with poets, playwrights, novelists, composers, musicians, dancers, actors, directors, etc. Often, as in Magritte’s case above, they used Marx to argue against a Party that was supposed to represent his thought. These artists—there are too many to list, including whole movements, such as the Harlem Renaissance, that American pedagogy has stripped of their communist politics—held themselves and each other to the standard of political correctness, applying it (as Kahlo does in the quote above) critically. To be politically correct is not to be self-satisfied or to rest on your laurels of compliance; it is to constantly hammer at your own work, your own self, and the world around you, so that it might become “something useful” politically. It means engagement and protest and weighing compromise and sometimes fleeing for your life. Far from staid or conservative, it’s a risky, experimental way to live.
★
Political correctness (as shorthand for “cultural Marxism”) is politically incorrect under liberalism because it asks that we think of ourselves as members of a class before we think of ourselves as individuals. Since classes are constituted by relations of exploitation, we think of ourselves first as workers or bosses in conflict, and women and men in conflict, and colonizers and colonized in conflict. (Looking at class relations beyond worker/boss is no violation of Marxist orthodoxy.) We shape our judgment and taste with our politics rather than the other way around. This is anathema to liberals, for whom individuals must think and act primarily as individuals, lest conformity overflow judgment, capsize meritocracy, and drown democracy.
They think we want to destroy the whole world as their eyes have adjusted to it. And they’re right.
Liberals find the idea that anything is more important than the individual, well, offensive. But does the world treat us as individuals? Is that what you tell a boss who has just laid you off? “I’m sorry the stockholders took a hit, but I need this job, and as you know nothing is more important than the individual.” Do we each wander a lonely path, advancing next to but separate from the people around us according to a mix of skill and luck, like a board game token? Does the world conform to our judgments, or is truer to say we mostly get what we get? Is it all-against-all or class-against-class? If the answer is the latter—and it is—then whose side you’re on precedes your individuality in importance. The individual only comes out when the authorities are looking for a distraction, a scapegoat, or an excuse.
The significant objective fact is that we live in a class society, and until we don’t anymore, that will continue to be the significant objective fact. To be PC is to acknowledge that truth as found, to recognize that we don’t each of us need to go rummaging through the bargain basement of ideas to understand society. The task for communists is to work with constancy and rigor in our thought and action toward a revolutionary break with class society. It’s only there, on an earth where people are not grouped for exploitation, where we can speak meaningfully about the individual. We’re looking forward to it.
Capitalism’s “particular hue” colors everything on the planet and even some stuff beyond; capitalists have wasted countless lives to make it so. If political correctness means Marxism which means the abolition of class society which means everything changes, then by the transitive property of equality, PC means the end of the world. When people object to political correctness that’s the real root of what they’re talking about: They think we want to destroy the whole world as their eyes have adjusted to it. And they’re right. But would that be so bad? To smash that ugly fluorescent overhead light would change everything, it’s true, but we needn’t fear being left in the dark. As the politically correct Langston Hughes wrote in his poem “Ballad of Lenin,” one of the ones we don’t learn in school:


motherjones--2020-02-28--Pramila Jayapal on the Historic Nature of Bernie’s Candidacy and the Inescapable Costs of Trump’s Pr

Pramila Jayapal on the Historic Nature of Bernie’s Candidacy and the Inescapable Costs of Trump’s Presidency

Pramila Jayapal , the freshman Democratic congresswoman from Washington , dubbed a “ rising star in the Democratic caucus ” by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi , has been fighting for immigrants ’ rights since waves of xenophobia swept the nation after 9/11 , and is now one of Congress ’ s leading critics of President Donald Trump ’ s draconian immigration policies .
Following a hectic few months serving on the House Judiciary Committee , championing Bernie Sanders as one of his campaign ’ s leading surrogates , and pushing Medicare for All legislation in Congress , Jayapal sat down @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to discuss the 2020 race , whether or not “ Bernie Bros ” really exist , Trump ’ s immigration policy horror show , and so much more .
Listen to this special Friday bonus edition of the Mother Jones Podcast to hear the conversation , recorded on stage in front of a live audience at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco earlier this month .
Below is a condensed and edited version of the discussion .
You first gained national recognition following 9/11 when you founded an organization about immigrant rights , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ being Hindu an asset to that work of sticking up for Muslims ?
I was raised as a Hindu .
I suppose I would consider myself one , but it wasn ’ t so much about that .
It was really about the civil liberties abuses that I saw .
It took me 17 years to become a U.S. citizen and a whole alphabet soup of visas .
I had literally just become a U.S. citizen in 2000 , and then 9/11 happened .
Suddenly there was an “ us ” and a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in the “ them ” category , because I didn ’ t look a certain way .
Then I started hearing about the civil liberties abuses against Muslims , Americans , Arab Americans .
All of that felt to me completely anathema to what I had just committed myself to the year before in becoming a U.S. citizen .
I felt so strongly that I had to speak out .
We successfully sued President Bush at the time for the deportation of around 4,000 Somalis across the country .
We won .
I @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ t been a citizen , I would have been even more afraid .
That was a scary time , but it felt to me like the most patriotic thing I could do .
You ’ ve been a big advocate in Congress for Muslim Americans .
Trump just extended the so-called Muslim travel ban to a bunch of countries : Nigeria , Burma , Eritrea , Kyrgyzstan , Sudan , and Tanzania .
What ’ s your analysis of why these countries were picked ?
It ’ s not entirely logical .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ ?
If you look at those countries , five out of six are Muslim majority countries .
The theoretical argument for adding these countries to the list is that they don ’ t meet a certain standard of security and reporting lost and stolen passports .
But there are many countries that don ’ t meet that threshold .
These are all parts of coordinated efforts , primarily run by Stephen Miller out of the White House , and a very coordinated anti-immigrant movement in the country , that is interested in stopping @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and religious targeting of Muslims .
I feel like the candidates have a lot to say about why Trump ’ s immigration , asylum , refugee programs are horrible on many different levels .
They haven ’ t done that much to lay out what their program would be .
What do you think a real immigration reform package could look like that could actually pass through Congress ?
The question of how we solve immigration is not actually a policy problem .
It is a purely political problem .
Immigration policy in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
It has always been about who we are as a country and what we ’ re willing to stand up for .
We need a whole new moral imagination on the role of immigration in the United States .
President Clinton and the passage of IRA , which was the Immigration Reform Act of the mid-90s , actually started cementing the criminalization of migration .
If we don ’ t go back to that and reverse some of those bad effects of the mid-1990s , then we will continue the problems we @ @ @ @ @ @ @ detention in addition to humane immigration reform .
That would take away a lot of the problems with interior enforcement and detention .
We have 56,000 people every night that we are locking up in immigration jails , mostly operated by for-profit prisons like GEO .
The vast majority of those people have never committed a crime , much less been charged with a crime .
One of your other signature issues has been furthering access to healthcare , and you ’ re a proponent of Medicare for All .
You were among @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to come up with her position .
Why did you endorse Bernie over her ?
I really believe that Bernie Sanders created the momentum for the movement for healthcare reform in this country , for single-payer , universal healthcare .
At the end of the day , I am a Brown immigrant woman .
I do not have the luxury to look at my choices through a single lens .
Racism , sexism , classism are all intertwined .
And I care about foreign policy , I care about immigration policy , I @ @ @ @ @ @ @ about income inequality .
And on all of those fronts , Bernie Sanders was the person that was most closely aligned for me .
In addition to that , I ’ m an organizer .
That ’ s what I did for 20 years before coming to Congress .
I don ’ t believe that any single person in the White House is going to make the kind of structural , bold change that we need to make .
That can only happen if we reengage a different kind of democracy , if @ @ @ @ @ @ @ color—who have given up on us , frankly , given up on democracy , given up on government—to be engaged .
And Bernie Sanders has this remarkable ability to both inspire a different generation and a multiethnic , multigenerational group of people , but also , to speak with authenticity and sincerity to a very disillusioned group of working class voters who hear him and believe he will fight for them .
I hear what you ’ re saying , and what the Sanders campaign is saying , that the momentum is everything @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that said , it is going to be Congress , not the president , that hashes out healthcare reform .
And that may not happen on the timetable—or to the degree that you and Senator Sanders will propose .
Do you run the risk of people feeling disappointed in the movement if it doesn ’ t get there ?
I believe that we can pass Medicare for All .
I ’ m not naive about that .
I know what we ’ re fighting against .
Yes .
But it all depends on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
If we don ’ t elect a Bernie Sanders or an Elizabeth Warren , it ’ s probably not going to happen .
Let ’ s say Senator Sanders wins , but the Senate does not flip .
Is Medicare for All going to pass ?
Well , that would be tough .
There ’ s no question you ’ ve got to have Congress in there .
I ’ m trying to unpack this .
It ’ s as if it would spring fully formed from the head of Bernie Sanders @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the way legislation works , right ?
It doesn ’ t spring out of the head of Bernie Sanders , for sure , but if you don ’ t have a president who will help make the case and you don ’ t have a movement that will help make the case , then you can ’ t do it .
I ’ ve got a bill .
It ’ s 125 pages .
The point is , Americans deserve universal guaranteed healthcare .
Don ’ t try to tell us we don @ @ @ @ @ @ @ what I feel like the message from outside that we ’ re fighting against all the time is , and if we have a president that says , “ Yes , we deserve this and we will figure out how to make it happen , ” you would see everything shift in this country .
You would see Congress shift .
One of the things that ’ s been burbling up again , and to some extent between the Bernie and Warren supporters , is Bernie folks going after the culinary union leaders @ @ @ @ @ @ @ because they haven ’ t endorsed Bernie or gone all the way to that .
Do you worry about this in terms of building the broadest possible— Look , I think that it ’ s really overstated , because I will tell you that when I endorsed Bernie in 2016 and when I endorsed Bernie now , I had a lot of people go after me who were Clinton supporters and Warren supporters .
Did I make that about them ?
No .
Are there people out there that we can ’ t @ @ @ @ @ @ @ all of that behavior ?
No , of course not .
I get a little frustrated with the perception that there ’ s a “ Bernie Bro , ” and that Bernie Bro looks nothing like me , because I can tell you , the people that I know that are on the Bernie campaign , and if you look at powerful women of color who are supporting Bernie , there are many of us , and we don ’ t want to be erased by some caricature of a group of people @ @ @ @ @ @ @ I will tell you—I ’ m a little paranoid—but I don ’ t even know if they ’ re Russian bots or if they ’ re real .
There are some of them that are real , I ’ m sure , but if we spend time focusing on the minority of people , we are really hurting ourselves .
You are on the House Judiciary Committee .
You ’ ve been busy !
I think everyone in this audience probably would agree that impeachment was the morally right thing to do , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Do you think that it helped Trump ?
This president deserved to be impeached .
He deserves to be removed .
And I don ’ t think , at the end of the day , that this is a political decision .
We take one oath when we come in and it ’ s to uphold the constitution , and there is no way I ’ m going to bed and waking up in the morning and looking at myself in the mirror and saying , “ I ’ m worried about whether @ @ @ @ @ @ @ whether it ’ s the politically right thing to do.
” Will the House Judiciary Committee subpoena Bolton and Mulvaney and others now ?
Now that the Senate has acquitted on this , is there something the House Judiciary wants to do ?
We are not going to stop doing the oversight we can do .
We have Bill Barr coming in to the Judiciary Committee in March , but before then , we are going to have a series of hearings to specifically go into the sidelining of prosecutors and the interference @ @ @ @ @ @ @ We will essentially be looking at the ways in which this Department of Justice under Bill Barr is being politicized and is being used purely for Donald Trump to achieve his goals .
In the past year , you ’ ve disclosed two very personal things .
The first is that your child is non-binary , and the second , that they were born very premature and were very fragile for years afterwards .
As a result of that , when you later got pregnant , and were told by your doctor that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ course , you decided to terminate that pregnancy .
Tell me what that was like to share that kind of thing so personally .
I thought a lot about the telling people about my abortion .
In the wake of the states passing abortion bans , I felt like I had this powerful platform and I should use it to tell this story so that people understand that they can tell their stories if they want to .
I was on a plane to D.C. and I just wrote the piece and it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ The response was amazing .
So many emails , letters , phone calls from across the country about people having conversations at their kitchen table and their mother or their sister or their friend suddenly disclosing that they too had had an abortion and what that meant for them .
And I felt like that was the best thing that could ’ ve happened , was for people to talk about it and not to feel ashamed about these choices .
Whatever your choice is , is what we ’ re fighting for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ agency .
Talking about my 23-year-old was very different .
We were debating the Equality Act in committee and the Republicans were talking about transgender people and non-binary people in such a horrendous way that I could feel the rage in me .
I texted Janak and I said , “ I ’ m just feeling like I want to talk about you .
Can I tell your story ?
” And then I immediately texted back and said , “ You know what ?
That ’ s not fair .
Forget about @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” And they texted me back with one question .
They said , “ Do you think it ’ ll help people ?
” And I said , “ I think it will , but it ’ s totally your choice and we can do it in a planned way .
We don ’ t have to do it right now.
” And they texted back and said , “ No , I really don ’ t want it in a planned way .
I want it to be organic , and if @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to help and it feels like the right thing , then go ahead.
” I knew I was going to get really emotional talking about it , which I did , but oh my God , am I so happy I did .
To this day , people write to me and say , “ I never thought I would see a Congress member using the pronoun ‘ they.
’ I feel seen , I feel heard.
” And I think that is what I try to use this platform for , to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ are already there , but just aren ’ t being lifted up in the way that they should .
And if I can do that , and if I can give people some sense that they are represented , that they ’ re seen , that they ’ re loved , that they ’ re believed in , then I think I ’ m doing a good job .

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Pramila Jayapal, the second-term Democratic congresswoman from Washington, dubbed a “rising star in the Democratic caucus” by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, has been fighting for immigrants’ rights since waves of xenophobia swept the nation after 9/11, and is now one of Congress’s leading critics of President Trump’s draconian immigration policies. Following a hectic few months serving on the House Judiciary Committee, championing Bernie Sanders as one of his campaign’s leading surrogates, and pushing Medicare for All legislation in Congress, Jayapal sat down with Mother Jones Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery to discuss the 2020 race, whether “Bernie Bros” really exist, Trump’s immigration policy horror show, and so much more.
Listen to this special Friday bonus edition of the Mother Jones Podcast to hear the conversation, recorded onstage in front of a live audience at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco earlier this month. Below is a condensed and edited version of the discussion.
Listen to the latest episode of the Mother Jones Podcast: Subscribe using Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or your favorite podcast app.
You first gained national recognition following 9/11 when you founded an organization about immigrant rights, and Muslim rights in particular. Was being Hindu an asset to that work of sticking up for Muslims?
I was raised as a Hindu. I suppose I would consider myself one, but it wasn’t so much about that. It was really about the civil liberties abuses that I saw. It took me 17 years to become a US citizen, and a whole alphabet soup of visas. I had literally just become a US citizen in 2000, and then 9/11 happened. Suddenly there was an “us” and a “them,” and I was in the “them” category because I didn’t look a certain way. Then I started hearing about the civil liberties abuses against Muslims, Americans, Arab Americans. All of that felt to me completely anathema to what I had just committed myself to the year before in becoming a US citizen.
I felt so strongly that I had to speak out. We successfully sued President Bush at the time for the deportation of around 4,000 Somalis across the country. We won. I realized then that perhaps if I hadn’t been a citizen, I would have been even more afraid. That was a scary time, but it felt to me like the most patriotic thing I could do.
You’ve been a big advocate in Congress for Muslim Americans. Trump just extended the so-called Muslim travel ban to a bunch of countries: Nigeria, Burma, Eritrea, Kyrgyzstan, Sudan, and Tanzania. What’s your analysis of why these countries were picked? It’s not entirely logical.
Yeah, but what is these days? If you look at those countries, five out of six are Muslim majority countries. The theoretical argument for adding these countries to the list is that they don’t meet a certain standard of security and reporting lost and stolen passports. But there are many countries that don’t meet that threshold. These are all parts of coordinated efforts, primarily run by Stephen Miller out of the White House, and a very coordinated anti-immigrant movement in the country, that is interested in stopping all immigration, with a particular xenophobic and religious targeting of Muslims.
I feel like the candidates have a lot to say about why Trump’s immigration, asylum, refugee programs are horrible on many different levels. They haven’t done that much to lay out what their program would be. What do you think a real immigration reform package could look like that could actually pass through Congress?
The question of how we solve immigration is not actually a policy problem. It’s a purely political problem. Immigration policy in this country has never been about policy. It has always been about who we are as a country and what we’re willing to stand up for. We need a whole new moral imagination on the role of immigration in the United States.
President Clinton and the passage of IRA, which was the Immigration Reform Act of the mid-’90s, actually started cementing the criminalization of migration. If we don’t go back to that and reverse some of those bad effects of the mid-1990s, then we will continue the problems we have. We have to deal with detention in addition to humane immigration reform. That would take away a lot of the problems with interior enforcement and detention. We have 56,000 people every night that we are locking up in immigration jails, mostly operated by for-profit prisons like GEO. The vast majority of those people have never committed a crime, much less been charged with a crime.
One of your other signature issues has been furthering access to health care, and you’re a proponent of Medicare for All. You were among the people that Elizabeth Warren consulted with to come up with her position. Why did you endorse Bernie over her?
I really believe that Bernie Sanders created the momentum for the movement for health care reform in this country, for single-payer, universal health care. At the end of the day, I am a Brown immigrant woman. I do not have the luxury to look at my choices through a single lens. Racism, sexism, classism are all intertwined. And I care about foreign policy, I care about immigration policy, I care about health care policy, I care about income inequality. And on all of those fronts, Bernie Sanders was the person that was most closely aligned for me.
“I am a Brown immigrant woman. I do not have the luxury to look at my choices through a single lens.”
In addition to that, I’m an organizer. That’s what I did for 20 years before coming to Congress. I don’t believe that any single person in the White House is going to make the kind of structural, bold change that we need to make. That can only happen if we reengage a different kind of democracy, if we get young people, folks of color—who have given up on us, frankly, given up on democracy, given up on government—to be engaged. And Bernie Sanders has this remarkable ability to both inspire a different generation and a multiethnic, multigenerational group of people, but also, to speak with authenticity and sincerity to a very disillusioned group of working class voters who hear him and believe he will fight for them.
I hear what you’re saying, and what the Sanders campaign is saying, that the momentum is everything to get these things passed. But that said, it is going to be Congress, not the president, that hashes out health care reform. And that may not happen on the timetable—or to the degree that you and Sen. Sanders will propose. Do you run the risk of people feeling disappointed in the movement if it doesn’t get there?
I believe that we can pass Medicare for All. I’m not naive about that. I know what we’re fighting against.
In one presidential term?
Yes. But it all depends on what happens in the president we elect. If we don’t elect a Bernie Sanders or an Elizabeth Warren, it’s probably not going to happen.
Let’s say Sen. Sanders wins, but the Senate does not flip. Is Medicare for All going to pass?
Well, that would be tough. There’s no question you’ve got to have Congress in there.
I’m trying to unpack this. It’s as if it would spring fully formed from the head of Bernie Sanders, and that’s just not the way legislation works, right?
It doesn’t spring out of the head of Bernie Sanders, for sure, but if you don’t have a president who will help make the case and you don’t have a movement that will help make the case, then you can’t do it. I’ve got a bill. It’s 125 pages. The point is, Americans deserve universal guaranteed health care. Don’t try to tell us we don’t. And that’s what I feel like the message from outside that we’re fighting against all the time is, and if we have a president that says, “Yes, we deserve this and we will figure out how to make it happen,” you would see everything shift in this country. You would see Congress shift.
One of the things that’s been burbling up again, and to some extent between the Bernie and Warren supporters, is Bernie folks going after the culinary union leaders. Bernie supporters going after them because they haven’t endorsed Bernie or gone all the way to that. Do you worry about this in terms of building the broadest possible—
Look, I think that it’s really overstated, because I will tell you that when I endorsed Bernie in 2016 and when I endorsed Bernie now, I had a lot of people go after me who were Clinton supporters and Warren supporters. Did I make that about them? No. Are there people out there that we can’t control? Absolutely. Do we condone all of that behavior? No, of course not. I get a little frustrated with the perception that there’s a “Bernie Bro,” and that Bernie Bro looks nothing like me, because I can tell you, the people that I know that are on the Bernie campaign, and if you look at powerful women of color who are supporting Bernie, there are many of us, and we don’t want to be erased by some caricature of a group of people that may or may not be.
I will tell you—I’m a little paranoid—but I don’t even know if they’re Russian bots or if they’re real. There are some of them that are real, I’m sure, but if we spend time focusing on the minority of people, we are really hurting ourselves.
You’re on the House Judiciary Committee. You’ve been busy! I think everyone in this audience probably would agree that impeachment was the morally right thing to do, the constitutionally appropriate thing to do. Do you think that it helped Trump?
This president deserved to be impeached. He deserves to be removed. And I don’t think, at the end of the day, that this is a political decision. We take one oath when we come in and it’s to uphold the constitution, and there is no way I’m going to bed and waking up in the morning and looking at myself in the mirror and saying, “I’m worried about whether this is going to help him or whether it’s the politically right thing to do.”
Will the House Judiciary Committee subpoena Bolton and Mulvaney and others now? Now that the Senate has acquitted on this, is there something the House Judiciary wants to do?
We’re not going to stop doing the oversight we can do. We have Bill Barr coming in to the Judiciary Committee in March, but before then, we are going to have a series of hearings to specifically go into the sidelining of prosecutors and the interference of the sentencing of Roger Stone. We will essentially be looking at the ways in which this Department of Justice under Bill Barr is being politicized and is being used purely for Donald Trump to achieve his goals.
In the past year, you’ve disclosed two very personal things. The first is that your child is nonbinary, and the second, that they were born very premature and were very fragile for years afterwards. As a result of that, when you later got pregnant and were told by your doctor that the second pregnancy would probably take that course, you decided to terminate that pregnancy. Tell me what that was like to share that kind of thing so personally.
I thought a lot about the telling people about my abortion. In the wake of the states passing abortion bans, I felt like I had this powerful platform and I should use it to tell this story so that people understand that they can tell their stories if they want to. I was on a plane to DC and I just wrote the piece and it came out in one fell swoop.
The response was amazing. So many emails, letters, phone calls from across the country about people having conversations at their kitchen table and their mother or their sister or their friend suddenly disclosing that they too had had an abortion and what that meant for them. And I felt like that was the best thing that could’ve happened, was for people to talk about it and not to feel ashamed about these choices. Whatever your choice is, is what we’re fighting for. We’re fighting for that agency.
Talking about my 23-year-old was very different. We were debating the Equality Act in committee and the Republicans were talking about transgender people and non-binary people in such a horrendous way that I could feel the rage in me. I texted Janak and I said, “I’m just feeling like I want to talk about you. Can I tell your story?” And then I immediately texted back and said, “You know what? That’s not fair. Forget about it. Whenever you’re ready.” And they texted me back with one question. They said, “Do you think it’ll help people?” And I said, “I think it will, but it’s totally your choice and we can do it in a planned way. We don’t have to do it right now.” And they texted back and said, “No, I really don’t want it in a planned way. I want it to be organic, and if it feels like it’s going to help and it feels like the right thing, then go ahead.”
I knew I was going to get really emotional talking about it, which I did, but oh my god, am I so happy I did. To this day, people write to me and say, “I never thought I would see a Congress member using the pronoun ‘they.’ I feel seen, I feel heard.” And I think that is what I try to use this platform for, to give some lift to the voices that are already there, but just aren’t being lifted up in the way that they should. And if I can do that, and if I can give people some sense that they are represented, that they’re seen, that they’re loved, that they’re believed in, then I think I’m doing a good job.
Correction: An earlier version of this story misstated Jayapal’s time in office. She is in her second term.


motherjones--2020-02-28--The Absurdity and Danger of Trump’s Deal to Send Asylum Seekers to Guatemala

Former Guatemalan attorney general Thelma Aldana fled to the United States after prosecuting rampant corruption at the highest levels of her country ’ s government .
On Monday , Aldana announced she ’ d been granted asylum in the United States .
Also on Monday , the United States flew asylum seekers from Texas to Guatemala City to force them to seek protection in…Guatemala .
The juxtaposition captures the absurdity of a new arrangement—known as a “ safe third country ” agreement , under the assumption that the destination can provide security to people fleeing prosecution—under which Central Americans stopped @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Guatemala for asylum .
A country unsafe for a former attorney general is now tasked with providing refuge to some of the region ’ s most vulnerable people .
Since the first flight in November , the Trump administration has sent more than 700 Hondurans and Salvadorans to Guatemala , about 75 percent of whom are women and children .
The agreement is part of a patchwork of policies established last year that have effectively ended asylum at the southern US border .
Immigrant advocacy groups are suing to try to stop the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the US-Guatemala agreement looks like in practice , I spoke with Charanya Krishnaswami , the advocacy director for the Americas at Amnesty International USA .
Krishnaswami returned last week from Guatemala City , where she met with Central Americans who had been sent there .
The interview has been edited for length and clarity .
Mother Jones : Tell me about the president ’ s agreement that brought you to Guatemala .
Charanya Krishnaswami : The so-called asylum cooperative agreements—which we ’ re calling “ unsafe third country ” agreements because that is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Trump administration inked with Guatemala , El Salvador , and Honduras last year , under which asylum seekers seeking protection at the Mexico-US border can be sent to any one of those countries to have their asylum cases decided there .
It ’ s important to note there is no requirement that individuals actually need to have been in those countries at any time .
These agreements would theoretically empower the US to send anyone to any one of these countries .
The only agreement that is in effect is the agreement @ @ @ @ @ @ @ sent back are from Honduras and El Salvador , although there were very real rumors that the US government would start trying to send Mexicans seeking protection at our border to Guatemala .
That hasn ’ t yet materialized .
CK : Something that has really astonished me is the large number of women and children who have been returned under the agreement .
When I had the opportunity to meet with people who had been transferred under the agreement , almost everyone I spoke to was a mother with a child—including a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a woman who was pregnant .
We know that individuals who identify as LGBTI have been sent back , even though Guatemala has recently passed laws that make it very difficult for NGOs that help LGBTI individuals to freely operate .
When I asked a shelter operator whether he had noticed anybody who was particularly vulnerable who had been sent back , he responded simply , “ Everybody is in a serious state of vulnerability.
” MJ : Before people are sent to Guatemala , what does their time in US Customs and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ : We ’ re seeing that asylum seekers being transferred to Guatemala are being kept in CBP facilities before being sent to Guatemala .
They ’ re being kept in these facilities for well over the 72-hour requirement .
Under these standards , individuals aren ’ t supposed to be in these facilities for more than 72 hours precisely because their conditions are not suitable for people who are being held for longer .
These facilities are utterly ill-equipped to respond to the needs of vulnerable people .
Now we see that the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ keeping people in these facilities for days and days at a time .
The folks I spoke to had been detained for anywhere from 10 to 15 days .
I spoke to one woman who just burst into tears when I asked her , “ What were the conditions like where they held you ?
” She just started to cry .
She said , “ That was the worst nightmare of my life .
I ’ ve never been treated like that .
It ’ s painful to even think about.
” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that was incredibly cold , getting nothing more than a thin mylar blanket and a thin mattress to sleep on .
Being separated from her child , who was kept in a different cell .
Having the lights on 24 hours a day and no windows .
She had no idea whether it was day or night .
Being treated horribly by the guards who were stationed in the facility .
MJ : What happens once they arrive in Guatemala ?
CK : So asylum seekers are transferred on planes along with Guatemalans @ @ @ @ @ @ @ re all loaded on a bus and taken to an NGO where they receive their initial legal orientation .
I spoke to several people who had no idea they were even going to Guatemala .
It came as a total shock to them when they landed .
Some of them thought that this was a layover and they were actually headed to their home countries .
They ’ re told by the Guatemalan government that they can apply for asylum , they can choose to “ voluntarily ” return to their country of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Organization for Migration , or option three is sort of figure it out on your own .
We heard from several different people involved in the process that they are told that they have 72 hours to make that decision , which can be really coercive in an environment where they ’ re just realizing they ’ re in Guatemala .
MJ : What did people say about what they were told by US officials before being flown to Guatemala ?
CK : They use words like feeling that they had been “ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ US officials .
One woman told me that the officer loading them on the plane said , “ OK , you ’ re going to get on this plane to continue your process.
” She said , “ Don ’ t lie to me .
What are we getting on the plane for ?
” And then the officer said that this is to deport you .
They ’ re just given very little information .
I talked to other folks who did understand the possibility that they would be sent to Guatemala @ @ @ @ @ @ @ didn ’ t want to go there and were nevertheless taken there .
MJ : What services are available to support people who are being sent there ?
CK : As I understand it , the Guatemalan government has very proudly said that it has not invested a single dollar in the implementation of this agreement .
What that means is that in practice the burden has fallen entirely to NGOs at a time when the Guatemalan government is cracking down on the free operation of NGOs .
MJ : How many people @ @ @ @ @ @ @ protection ?
And what do we know about what ’ s happening to the rest ?
CK : That is the question that keeps me up at night .
When I was there last week , about 650 people had been returned .
The official numbers we got were that 14 people have sought asylum .
About 25 had opted for this “ voluntary ” return .
That leaves over 600 people who are entirely unaccounted for .
We don ’ t know where they are .
We don ’ t know if @ @ @ @ @ @ @ countries of persecution .
We don ’ t know if they ’ re trying to traverse the journey north again with all of the risks that that poses .
It ’ s just very unclear .
It ’ s very scary , in part , because this agreement is so facially unlawful , so violative of both our domestic and international commitments .
People who ’ ve been subjected to it—should a court ever rule that this agreement is unlawful , how are they made whole ?
How do we identify them to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in the United States under a fair process ?

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Former Guatemalan attorney general Thelma Aldana fled to the United States after prosecuting rampant corruption at the highest levels of her country’s government. On Monday, Aldana announced she’d been granted asylum in the United States.
Also on Monday, the United States flew asylum seekers from Texas to Guatemala City to force them to seek protection in…Guatemala.
The juxtaposition captures the absurdity of a new arrangement—known as a “safe third country” agreement, under the assumption that the destination can provide security to people fleeing prosecution—under which Central Americans stopped at the US-Mexico border have to ask Guatemala for asylum. A country unsafe for a former attorney general is now tasked with providing refuge to some of the region’s most vulnerable people. Since the first flight in November, the Trump administration has sent more than 700 Hondurans and Salvadorans to Guatemala, about 75 percent of whom are women and children.
The agreement is part of a patchwork of policies established last year that have effectively ended asylum at the southern US border. Immigrant advocacy groups are suing to try to stop the flights to Guatemala.
To understand what the US-Guatemala agreement looks like in practice, I spoke with Charanya Krishnaswami, the advocacy director for the Americas at Amnesty International USA. Krishnaswami returned last week from Guatemala City, where she met with Central Americans who had been sent there. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Mother Jones: Tell me about the president’s agreement that brought you to Guatemala.
Charanya Krishnaswami: The so-called asylum cooperative agreements—which we’re calling “unsafe third country” agreements because that is in fact what they are—are new agreements the Trump administration inked with Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras last year, under which asylum seekers seeking protection at the Mexico-US border can be sent to any one of those countries to have their asylum cases decided there.
It’s important to note there is no requirement that individuals actually need to have been in those countries at any time. These agreements would theoretically empower the US to send anyone to any one of these countries. The only agreement that is in effect is the agreement with Guatemala. The asylum seekers being sent back are from Honduras and El Salvador, although there were very real rumors that the US government would start trying to send Mexicans seeking protection at our border to Guatemala. That hasn’t yet materialized.
MJ: Are vulnerable populations being exempted?
CK: Something that has really astonished me is the large number of women and children who have been returned under the agreement. When I had the opportunity to meet with people who had been transferred under the agreement, almost everyone I spoke to was a mother with a child—including a child who had a broken arm, a woman who was pregnant. We know that individuals who identify as LGBTI have been sent back, even though Guatemala has recently passed laws that make it very difficult for NGOs that help LGBTI individuals to freely operate.
When I asked a shelter operator whether he had noticed anybody who was particularly vulnerable who had been sent back, he responded simply, “Everybody is in a serious state of vulnerability.”
MJ: Before people are sent to Guatemala, what does their time in US Customs and Border Protection custody look like?
CK: We’re seeing that asylum seekers being transferred to Guatemala are being kept in CBP facilities before being sent to Guatemala. They’re being kept in these facilities for well over the 72-hour requirement. Under these standards, individuals aren’t supposed to be in these facilities for more than 72 hours precisely because their conditions are not suitable for people who are being held for longer. These facilities are utterly ill-equipped to respond to the needs of vulnerable people. Now we see that the US is premising these new programs on keeping people in these facilities for days and days at a time. The folks I spoke to had been detained for anywhere from 10 to 15 days.
I spoke to one woman who just burst into tears when I asked her, “What were the conditions like where they held you?” She just started to cry. She said, “That was the worst nightmare of my life. I’ve never been treated like that. It’s painful to even think about.” She told me about a holding cell that was incredibly cold, getting nothing more than a thin mylar blanket and a thin mattress to sleep on. Being separated from her child, who was kept in a different cell. Having the lights on 24 hours a day and no windows. She had no idea whether it was day or night. Being treated horribly by the guards who were stationed in the facility.
MJ: What happens once they arrive in Guatemala?
I spoke to one woman who just burst into tears when I asked her, “What were the conditions like where they held you?” She said, “That was the worst nightmare of my life.”
CK: So asylum seekers are transferred on planes along with Guatemalans who are being deported. They’re all loaded on a bus and taken to an NGO where they receive their initial legal orientation. I spoke to several people who had no idea they were even going to Guatemala. It came as a total shock to them when they landed. Some of them thought that this was a layover and they were actually headed to their home countries.
They’re told by the Guatemalan government that they can apply for asylum, they can choose to “voluntarily” return to their country of origin with the assistance of the International Organization for Migration, or option three is sort of figure it out on your own. We heard from several different people involved in the process that they are told that they have 72 hours to make that decision, which can be really coercive in an environment where they’re just realizing they’re in Guatemala.
MJ: What did people say about what they were told by US officials before being flown to Guatemala?
CK: They use words like feeling that they had been “cheated” and “deceived” by US officials. One woman told me that the officer loading them on the plane said, “OK, you’re going to get on this plane to continue your process.” She said, “Don’t lie to me. What are we getting on the plane for?” And then the officer said that this is to deport you.
They’re just given very little information. I talked to other folks who did understand the possibility that they would be sent to Guatemala, and who specifically articulated that they didn’t want to go there and were nevertheless taken there.
MJ: What services are available to support people who are being sent there?
Fourteen people have sought asylum. About 25 had opted for this “voluntary” return. That leaves over 600 people who are entirely unaccounted for.
CK: As I understand it, the Guatemalan government has very proudly said that it has not invested a single dollar in the implementation of this agreement. What that means is that in practice the burden has fallen entirely to NGOs at a time when the Guatemalan government is cracking down on the free operation of NGOs.
MJ: How many people being sent to Guatemala are applying for protection? And what do we know about what’s happening to the rest?
CK: That is the question that keeps me up at night. When I was there last week, about 650 people had been returned. The official numbers we got were that 14 people have sought asylum. About 25 had opted for this “voluntary” return. That leaves over 600 people who are entirely unaccounted for. We don’t know where they are. We don’t know if they’re going back to their countries of persecution. We don’t know if they’re trying to traverse the journey north again with all of the risks that that poses.
It’s just very unclear. It’s very scary, in part, because this agreement is so facially unlawful, so violative of both our domestic and international commitments. People who’ve been subjected to it—should a court ever rule that this agreement is unlawful, how are they made whole? How do we identify them to give them the opportunity to seek asylum in the United States under a fair process?