As Americans, we are—sadly—familiar with many sorts of othering. In this case, the specific othering Adam Novy is referring to in his October, 2018, article is the horrible resurgence of anti-Semitism on the American far right, which he argues is a (misguided and wrong) reaction to neoliberal capitalism and its discontents:
Neoliberal capitalism, the age in which we live, began in the seventies as a rejection of the social safety net which had existed since before World War Two. Under the stewardship of people like Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, the government abandoned public services to the guidance of the market, with the idea that private investment would rejuvenate the country, it would spill out over everyone like a flood.
The dogma of privatization feeds American mythologies of individuals and bootstraps, pitting us against each other in the name of competition and free markets. It’s a zero-sum game with millions of losers, and most people are necessarily left out. [. . .] Every part of the individual is for sale. The surrender of our lives to market forces has driven us insane, say certain critics. In this era of deregulation, disaggregation and privatization, no two people’s search results are identical and we exist in tubes of demographic solitude. The market is a kind of outer space of instability, a place of ontological uncertainty and terror.
So Neoliberalism broke life into parts and sold it off for scrap. And lest you think that this is 4Chan propaganda, one finds a surprising unanimity in the way that Neoliberalism is seen across our politics. The progressive website Vox explains it this way: “… [given] the extension of markets or market-like logic to more and more spheres of life… we can increasingly view ourselves as little more than human capital maximizing our market values.” A poster on 4Chan says the same exact thing: “The ultimate goal is a global common market and the elimination of pre-capital identity. Identity is to become a collection of commodified consumer objects…” It is painful to see identity described this way.
Says another poster in that thread [on an anonymous online message board for self-described incels—involuntary celibates, virulent and often violent women haters], “We’re depressed because deep down we know we live in a propaganda lie.” These people think that we should drop the pills, and fix the world itself. What’s the first thing we should do to change the world? For the alt-right, the answer is kill the Jews.
Blaming Jews has pedigree, which is why the alt-right does it.
Blaming Jews has been a winning strategy for centuries. The Nazi website The Daily Stormer—which is a current publication, not something out of World War Two—puts it this way in their style guide: “Prime Directive: always blame the Jews for everything…as Hitler says, people will become confused and disheartened if they feel there are multiple enemies. As such, all enemies should be combined into one enemy, which is the Jews…This is pretty much objectively true anyway, but we want to leave out any nuance.” The goal is keep it simple and direct, so that no one is “confused and disheartened.”
But blaming Jews this way reduces Jews to a pure, homogenous other. Jews are not a single substance; you should try discussing Israel at Chanukah this year and see how much consensus you can find. Anti-Semitism is ideological, it naturalizes Jews the same way Neoliberalism naturalizes markets. It acts like Jewish qualities are innate, they are eternal and unchanging, like the hills. Instead of rejecting Neoliberal ideology, anti-Semitism continues to enact it. One thing Neoliberalism does extremely well is separate people from each other—into faces on a phone, empty vessels we project desire into, and also fear and rage. Jews are not our neighbors anymore, they’re a simple explanation for our problems, and killing them solves everything.
Novy, a Jewish man, harbors no sympathy for the far-right opinions he takes the time to describe. But while he disagrees with their “cure”, he agrees with a broad consensus even these alt-righters share in:
“And yet the alt-right is correct that something is wrong—the marketization of everything has seeped into our brains, and it makes us feel despair.”
It’s clear that the solutions being peddled by modern-day Nazis and others in the loose-knit coalition of all manner of right-wing extremists active today are abhorrent. It is likewise clear that, as a nation, our “endless othering” is a futile shot in the foot. While we sit around bickering and fighting amongst ourselves, time keeps ticking by, and without us envisioning and actively working toward it, the kind of future we like to imagine ourselves or our children living in one day recedes, retreats from view, becoming more difficult and less likely to be attained with each backstep we or those around us take.
What is the solution, then?
On the far left, some would say revolution, even if violent. Tear the whole thing down. Burn it to the ground. Down with all capitalists, do away with money, never buy anything ever again, return to barter and trade. But a lot of these “cures” are equally misguided—prejudiced and violent at worst and amounting to a sort of economic neo-luddism at best.
No, I share Novy’s view that “new horizons of shared purpose” are the best remedy.
And I’m not the only one:
Psychologists frequently cite volunteerism and other forms of engagement in an area of concern to their patients as a way to combat feelings of helplessness in the face of depressing realities.
Lucy, blue-dressed peddler of amateur “PSYCHIATRIC HELP—5¢,” offers Charlie Brown “involvement” as director of a Christmas play, as a means to distract from his feelings of futility and to give a sense of structure, community, and meaning to the holiday season. Despite being a cartoon character, Lucy’s advice was, after all, written by a man of flesh and blood, and it has rung true with viewers for over fifty years.
And there are plenty of examples of this strategy working.
I am put in mind first of a few fictional illustrations. Mainly because I am currently in the middle of season two of the exceptional CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) series Anne With An E and can't stop thinking about it, whatever the context or topic at hand. In episode 6 of this season, “I Protest Against Any Absolute Conclusion” (the episode titles are quite worthy of Lucy Maud Montgomery’s heroine and her penchant for poetical flourishes), the town embarks on the production of a Christmas pantomime. Townsfolk of all different age groups, children belonging to competing school cliques, community members with a wide variety of contributing skills and interests all (mostly) set aside their petty differences and instead choose to gather week after week to create something beautiful and entertaining together, something to take pride in together, for the simple reason of having something to brighten all their lives during the cold, dark winter.
Or think of any of the many Hollywood alien contact movies you’ve probably seen in your life. The nations of the world are locked in intractable political and economic rivalries. Then a ship appears, and at once our new “shared purpose,” as Novy puts it, allows us to override our earthbound rancor in record time, to communicate and coordinate with one another and push our species’ strategic and technological capabilities beyond the brink of previous possibility or imagination. Forcing us to jump feetfirst into the future.
For real-life examples of how common endeavors can propel us forward, making the impossible possible while simultaneously tempering antagonisms and moving differences to the background, consider barn raising, for instance, where neighbors who may not normally get along stand shoulder to shoulder as they build up their town. Or think of how not just first responders but also ordinary citizens unfailingly give of their time, resources, and even bodies to help rescue and rebuild after disasters. Think of Gulf Coast flooding or Great Plains tornadoes—secular and religious America collectively holding their breath out of concern for their fellow man, organizing food and clothing drives in shared spaces. Think of Mexican office workers, students, and shopkeepers—Priistas and Perredistas side by side in solidarity—forming bucket brigades unbidden, moving out debris with their bare hands, faster than even the most hopeful projections, after the 2017 earthquake. Think of terrorist attacks in cities all over the world, and the hours-long blood donation lines that spring up afterwards in defiant compassion.
Perhaps one of the best examples of the power of shared purpose to pull people together and move figurative mountains is the Space Race. The 1950s and 60s were dark, difficult, uncertain times. And yet they were also—despite the existential dread—a time of astounding optimism. The entire nation threw itself with fullhearted enthusiasm into the staggeringly large task of besting the Russians in space. We decided that we were going to try our best to do it . . . and by gum we did! It wasn’t only the government that mobilized but also everyday citizens, not only aeronautical engineers with advanced degrees but also schoolchildren just learning to count. Marketers, the media, artists, and authors all had a hand in keeping space on the brain. Thus even complete spectators to the process—who were the vast majority, most Americans having no direct involvement in the science, economics, or politics of getting to space—felt truly invested in the efforts and outcomes of this shared national endeavor. As we raised our collective sights, our collective spirits were lifted.
Not only that, the plethora of technological spinoffs resulting from the Space Race slingshotted us all straight into the future. Apart from the main but nevertheless oft-overlooked fact that WE FIGURED OUT HOW TO MAKE ACTUAL FUNCTIONING OUTER-SPACE SATELLITES, SPACESUITS, AND ROCKETS, other advances from this period have trickled down into our everyday lives. Memory foam—a better night’s sleep, brought to you by astronauts’ need for high-impact-resistant cushioning to protect their derrières; the joystick—not just great fun for video games, but a key tool for certain types of surgeries and for those in wheelchairs with impaired mobility; freeze-dried food—a delicious and nutritious way to preserve and transport food more easily, as useful on earth as it is in the heavens; space blankets—metallized polyethylene terephthalate-coated plastic sheeting whose insulating properties have aided everyone from hikers and campers to soldiers and disaster victims; the DustBuster—cord-free vacuuming to lighten our domestic load; and satellite TV—information and entertainment continually beaming down at us from geosynchronous orbit.
In summary, all of these examples, both fictional and non, not only make us feel united in common cause, they actively hasten the future, bringing us closer to the more just, equitable, inspiring world we wish we could already be living in. Volunteering brings improved quality of life, moving us further in the direction of a world without want. Building up neighborhoods creates community bonds that can last generations. Involvement in pageants, plays, pantomimes, and the like elevates us all with culture and beauty, creating stepping stones for subsequent artistic achievements to build on. The Space Race showered us with positive externalities: giant leaps for mankind in basic research, manufacturing, and engineering, and safety procedures and managerial protocols that have spread well beyond the world of industry, advancing all our lives.
We see, then, how when we participate in shared endeavors, we move forward toward that shining future just over the horizon.
* * * * *
Stay tuned next time for more on shared endeavors that will get you excited about the future!