A 'Humanity First' View on the Bernie Sanders Movement, Part 2 | TaraElla Report S5 E8

TaraElla: Hi everyone, welcome again to the TaraElla Report. This show is brought to you by my new book, The Moral Libertarian Idea, which is all about reimagining a positive and pro-community, pro-humanity classical liberalism for the 21st century. Link is in the description.

As I said two episodes back, many of us feel particularly conflicted about Bernie the man vs the movement behind him. The fact is, many family orientated people, including some conservatives, like my friend Allison, have been warming to Bernie's economic reforms quite a bit. However, they often don't feel comfortable about the culture of the Bernie movement. That's why some of them have found the Tulsi Train much more hospitable, for example.

Allison: As a practical conservative, I clearly see that the past few decades of so-called conservative politics has produced results in direct opposition to the conservative goals of strong families, strong social fabric, and preservation of our cherished insitutions like marriage. Trickle-down economics has clearly failed, and they have left millions of broken families behind. Bernie's determination to take us away from this failed economics, and towards more humane policies that will help working families and repair our social fabric, is truly inspirational.

However, I have also seen people who claim to support Bernie having worldviews and goals that are incompatible with mine. For example, I have seen Bernie supporters who make jokes about free speech. That's very dangerous, I think. Another time, one Bernie supporter introduced me to some socialist literature, including a British publication about a 'future socialist society', which said that families would essentially be abolished under socialism because they would no longer be relevant. You can't deny that's scary stuff. Furthermore, there's the whole BreadTube subculture, and frankly they sometimes have culturally radical views like how family values should be deconstructed. Those people seem to often be Bernie supporters too. My concern is that, if I sign up to the Bernie movement, am I signing up for these things too?

Ashley: You know, the Bernie movement is a broad church, and there are all sorts of people in there. So, if you decide to support Bernie, you are definitely not signing up to the agenda of these fringe activists. The vast majority of Bernie supporters are not anti-free speech or anti-family, and they certainly don't want to deconstruct family values either. What gives me confidence about the Bernie movement is that it is popular, mass politics. The more people participate in a movement, the broader the tent, the less likely it is to be affected by fringe minorities. A truly popular mass movement will be dominated by the common sense of everyday working people, therefore fringe philosophies won't get too much of a hearing.

Allison: But I still have some lingering concern. You know, the most extreme fringes of movements often get to spread their ideas into the mainstream and end up controlling the mainstream agenda, simply because they are the loudest and the most committed. It's how many well-meaning movements end up getting derailed by extremism. With Tulsi, at least I can know that an extremist fringe doesn't exist. How can I have confidence that the Bernie movement won't be taken over by its extremist fringe?

TaraElla: Like I said two episodes back, unlike the Tulsi Train or the Yang Gang, the Bernie movement is much more firmly located in the leftist political superorganism, and is both much closer to and much more hospitable to certain fringe ideas that are bad for humanity and liberty. Once again, this isn't about Bernie himself, which I quite like as a person; this is about where the movement is situated in the broader political scene.

As for whether that would affect my view of the Bernie movement, I guess it will have to depend on whether the Bernie movement looks more like a real mass movement or an elitist movement dominated by people from certain cultural backgrounds. I guess a truly popular movement will always be kept sane by the common sense of everyday working people. There is perhaps no better way to keep the fringe and harmful ideas out. On the other hand, throughout history, there have been movements that claimed to represent the masses but clearly had an elite in control of the culture and the direction of the movement. Sometimes, they even made excuses like how the masses are not educated enough, and so on. This kind of movement is clearly not a real mass movement, but rather mass manipulation by a small cultural elite.

I guess for some people then, whether they could support Bernie would depend on whether the Bernie movement actually resembles a real broad based movement, that is responsive to the concerns, needs and desires of everyday working families, without being compromised by the agenda of fringe cultural elites like postmodernists and critical theorists. Right now, I think we're not entirely confident either way as yet. What I want to see is more people with diverse backgrounds and diverse cultural views supporting Bernie. I guess that's what will give us confidence.