NOTE: While I did support certain candidates in the 2019–20 Democratic primaries because of their ideas (e.g. UBI, anti-war, broad tent approach), it doesn't mean I endorse their other positions.
Today, I am going to discuss the concept of anti-establishment, and why, contrary to popular belief, Tulsi Gabbard and Andrew Yang are the only truly anti-establishment candidates for this year's US presidential elections. Yes, you've heard right. Neither Bernie Sanders nor Donald Trump are fully anti-establishment in the holistic picture, even if they have anti-establishment credentials in some areas. In fact, this difference explains why Trump is now President, Bernie is doing quite well and may yet be President next year, while Yang has already dropped out.
The thing is, to be truly anti-establishment, one has to refuse to accept any established ideological framework. This includes both economic ideology, as in corporate neo-liberalism or hawkish neo-conservatism for example, as well as cultural ideology, as in most of the stuff that is championed by activist establishments and/or comes out of academic humanities. One should also not be linked too strongly to any established political faction, left or right.
Let me explain. Let's start with what 'the establishment' is. Almost everyone hates 'the establishment' these days, but nobody seems to be able to define it in a complete way. In particular, left-leaning people seem to define it as the 'economic establishment', including corporations and politicians who support corporate capitalist interests, and right-leaning people seem to define it as the 'cultural establishment', people who have been able to enforce a set of ideas onto society through their dominance in journalism, media, and certain sections of academia, for example. On the surface, these two definitions appear to be talking about very different things. Hence why leftist anti-establishment people and right-leaning anti-establishment people are rarely on talking terms. For example, when right-leaning anti-establishment people attack the ideological extremes coming out of college campus politics as a kind of 'elite establishment' thinking, left-leaning people often say they're only a distraction, and in turn criticize the right for focusing on immature college students without any formal power while ignoring the economic and political establishments.
In truth, this kind of debate misses the bigger picture. We're anti-establishment because we want individual freedom, and the establishment wants to control the masses as well as econmically exploit the masses. But the fact is that, in modern society, there's not only one establishment, or one kind of establishment. There are indeed multiple 'establishments' operating to control and exploit people for their own ends, each with their own power derived from their long history, which is what makes them 'the establishment' by definition. The other thing is, political, economic and cultural power all matter, and they are all linked. Therefore, criticizing the establishment, or more accurately, the establishments, in one dimension, while ignoring the other dimensions, provides an inadequate picture. This is because all three types of establishment power seek to limit the freedom of individuals, and they often act in concert to ensure that the people only have limited choice for change, often swapping more freedom in one domain for accepting the status quo or even more oppression in another, packaging these trade-offs in the form of ideology labelled as 'left-wing' or 'right-wing'. For example, they may make you choose between either having more free speech but less health care coverage, or more health care but less free speech. After multiple rounds of such choices, what generally happens is that the establishments retain all their power, and the people have none. That's why even partially anti-establishment choices are still playing into their trap, in many ways.
Let's take Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders for example. Political opposites in many ways, yet they are both anti-establishment in some areas but still cling to the establishment in others. Trump is certainly against the cultural establishment, which means he has had some effectiveness in taking a stand for free speech, for example. However, he still represents the establishment in many matters of economic interests, which has meant that he hasn't been able or willing to sufficiently make things better for many economically struggling people. Furthermore, while he's partially against the political establishment, including the pro-war neoconservative faction in his own party, he also partially leans on the political establishment and its polarized two-party system to get to where he is, which has hamstrung his ability to take on the neoconservative hawks or to enact a better health care plan. On the other hand, Bernie is thoroughly anti-establishment in economic matters, which is why he is able to be bolder in economic reform. However, he effectively relies on the institutionalized left, which overlaps a lot with the cultural establishment, to get to where he is, which is why he can't push back very much on postmodern, Marcusean or anti-free speech agendas that come from the cultural elite. It's why he's essentially much softer now on open borders, even though it hurts workers, and he knows it's bad. Furthermore, like Trump, he also partially leans on the polarized two-party system to get to where he is, which will again limit his ability to end the wars. So either way, the endless wars continue, you get a choice of tradeoff between freedom and oppression that is labelled 'left' or 'right', when you're tired of one you can pick the other, and the cycle goes on forever.
With someone like Tulsi Gabbard or Andrew Yang, you're not forced to make any trade-offs, or give anything up to any part of the establishment. You can have your economic reform, you can have your free speech, and with a big tent encompassing the whole political spectrum, there's hope for popular will to end the endless wars. In this way, this is neither the 'left' package nor the 'right' package of partial freedom, truly 'not left, not right, but foward' as Yang puts it. Of course, the downside is that, they don't get the institutional power of either the right-leaning economic establishment or the left-leaning cultural establishment to boost their campaign. It's why they've suffered from media blackouts, and it's why Yang has already dropped out and Tulsi is struggling. The establishment likes to control people, and it seems that in 2020, at least so far, they are succeeding in doing just that, using their multiple levers of power.
So what can we do now? I guess raising consciousness of the real nature of the establishment, as I've just described, is the first step. The more people realize that the so-called 'left' and 'right' choices are just the establishments' way to make us give up our agency and obey them in some way, the better. Even more importantly, we need to make people see that the left-right-left-right cycle, resulting from the action-reaction impulse, ultimately ends up with the establishment having even more power and control. When people realize all this, they will see why we need to go 'not left, not right, but forward'. They will fight the political, economic and cultural establishments simultaneously, and they will no longer only fight against one dimension but leave another alone. When this consciousness is firmly in place in the general population, I think that's when someone like Yang or Tulsi will be able to succeed without relying on any dimension of the establishment.
