#182: No idols
Reevaluating "the platform," from campus protests to celebrity statements
This spring, a couple friends and I became fixated on the student demonstrations for Palestine. We shared journalism about them—Osita Nwanevu’s essay about how “the student left is the most reliably correct constituency in America,” Arielle Isack’s scenes from a protest, Tyler Austin Harper’s piece about college campuses reaping what they’ve sown—but mostly we talked more emotionally about how moving we found them. We were moved by the way the students protected each other and educated themselves, how they made their demands clear and took profound risks to deliver them. Between the three of us, two are writers “with a platform” and one is a filmmaker and teacher at a college. According to popular notions about who is meant to lead and inspire in moments of crisis, we’re not unlikely candidates. But here the students were, teaching us instead.
They’re still on my mind, even as headlines have mostly moved on. I keep thinking about why, in a deluge of impassioned calls for ceasefire online and around the world, their movement stood out. Was it the risk they incurred by gathering? The sense that their actions felt studied, careful, and part of a storied tradition? Was it their collective anonymity—a movement with no apparent leader or “face” to celebrate? Or maybe it was the ideological clarity of the protest: students literally disrupting an institution they belonged to with specific requests for change. I admire the teacher strikes that are now happening for similar reasons, and the ongoing worker strikes around the world that are attempting to disrupt the manufacturing and sale of weapons being used by the Israeli military. These kinds of political actions are, to me, always the most inspiring. I return to them a lot when I’m feeling cynical and hopeless, which is almost always a result of spending too much time online, where political movements play out less effectively, or at the very least less concretely.
I juxtapose the student protests, for example, against one mainstay of social media activism: the rash of pleas I see on Instagram for celebrities to use their platforms to make statements about the atrocities unfolding in Gaza. Their disorganization notwithstanding, these commenters form a kind of collective in their own right, and their request is affronting and clear, at least if you read celebrity comment sections. I sense their genuine rage and disappointment. But their comments also feel neutered as an act of political resistance. First there is the question of what a forced statement from a celebrity would do, which is unclear to me, apart perhaps from raise money, which isn’t typically what people are asking for, but even if they were, should celebrities who aren’t actually engaged be the ones choosing where to allocate funds? This raises the question of whether we want entertainers—that is, people who got rich off talents like singing and acting—to be our political mouthpieces. And finally there is the question of whether we need political mouthpieces at all.
To the commenters’ credit, I don’t think the effect is totally benign, if only for the visual impact of so much Palestinian support in one digital location. In “The Nature of Mass Demonstrations,” John Berger writes that unlike the aims of a riot, which are immediate and desperate, or the aims of a revolution, which are long-term and comprehensive, the aim of a demonstration is symbolic: “it demonstrates a force that is scarcely used.” That is, the collective power of ordinary people. He suggests this “power in numbers” is important not because of the impression it makes on the State (or the college, celebrity, institution, etc.), but because of the impression it makes on the demonstrators themselves, and those who support their cause. “In this way a mass demonstration simultaneously extends and gives body to an abstraction,” he writes. “Those who take part become more positively aware of how they belong to a class. Belonging to that class ceases to imply a common fate, and implies a common opportunity.”
Like a real-life crowd’s buzz and bulk, online virality does have a way of taking up space—it occupies attention, the internet’s ultimate commodity. And drawing attention to an issue is obviously important, especially as a catalyst for people taking direct action offline (like say, protesting on a college campus, organizing at work, or being an active community member). But since the internet is two-dimensional and mediated through individual platforms, oftentimes the boldest action a person can take there is to simply make a statement. Online, to act is to state. It is, proverbially and literally, all talk. This gets at the fundamental problem of the internet being a medium rather than a place to demonstrate: If someone doesn’t like what you’re saying, they can simply mute you and order a pizza.
The calls for celebrity statements also make me think of Jewish Currents Editor-in-Chief Arielle Angel’s “Beyond Grievance,” in which she explores the limits of “foregrounding grievance in the name of justice.” She writes that, in doing this, “we do not appear any better situated to hold power to account. If anything, the opposite is true: As our gerontocracy ignores us, we often turn the tools we have sharpened to fight it against one another, where we meet with more ‘success.’” In other words, grievance may be a more effective form of catharsis than anything else. Catharsis has its place. Sometimes it feels like all we have.
The emphasis social media has placed on making a statement as a political action has had a strange effect on what it means, now, to “be political,” or what we ask of people in moments of political crisis (which is basically all the time). The other day I was talking to Avi about people complaining that Taylor Swift doesn’t state her politics, and I keep thinking about his reply: “She doesn’t need to. Her politics are clear.” This reminded me of the economic theory I recently learned about known as “revealed preference,” which is the idea that our preferences are revealed not through our statements but our choices. I’d prefer to evaluate our political beliefs this way—understanding them not through what we say, but what we do. And I don’t mean intuiting what someone “thinks” through their actions; I mean considering the action to be the richest source of meaning.
Statements can still be important. Given how divisive this conflict is in America, the right person speaking out might serve as an opening for others to speak out too, a gesture in its own right. But I fear an overemphasis on words perpetuates politics as a spectacle, as a conversation topic, as a means through which one gets on “the right side of history” out of some investment in personal legacy, rather than a set of conditions that inspires people to behave, connect, and organize in certain ways. I keep thinking about the faceless nature of the student demonstrations—how there was no leader, no idol, no raised platform for the most important person. Just a sea of young people, arms interlocked, blocking the flow of ordinary life. Their message was so much louder than a single person’s ever could be.
Yet the violence continues, not just against Palestinian people but everywhere, often at the hands of the American empire. It’s devastating on a level that almost can’t register in my brain. These days I feel more and more that I don’t have any answers about what will make an impact or what won’t, only more questions, and I don’t want to pretend otherwise just because I “have a platform.” Even as I write this newsletter I feel out of my depth, worried that by sharing my personal sources of cynicism and inspiration I might discourage people from doing what feels right to them.
But that preoccupation with saying the right thing is unproductive and self-indulgent, and it leads me back to the idea of revealed preferences, or revealed politics, versus stated ones. And maybe more importantly, towards notions of collective power versus something more atomized, solipsistic, and moralizing. This distinction reminds me a little of something Hamilton Nolan wrote in an essay last week, about the importance of grassroots movements over electoral politics. His piece is about the way Democrats often vilify the progressive left for not playing the game when it comes to elections, or being too idealistic, but the game isn’t everything. He points out that despite having little representation in Washington, the left has been largely and historically responsible for moving society forward. He writes, “In the case of almost every familiar movement—civil rights, labor rights, gender equality, gay rights, anti-war movements, and on and on—the left was on the morally correct but politically unpopular side.” Many of these causes were ultimately embraced, or at the very least vindicated, because leftists changed society from the bottom up “by forming national and international social and political movements made up of thousands and millions of people engaged in protest and direct action and education and community building and labor organizing and other actions outside of electoral politics.”
I relate to the feeling of wanting people with the biggest platforms to use them for political ends. It’s something I’ve grappled with as someone with a modest platform myself, and also someone who’s written a lot about the concept of the celebrity sell-out—that is, wishing famous people appeared to live with moral scruples. But I wonder if these concerns amount to grievance. “Grievance by nature concedes that power lies elsewhere,” writes Arielle Angel, “and very often, it does! And yet, to hear of people teaching each other how to give abortions or watch them flooding the streets, washing away an unjust regime, is to witness what is possible when we recognize, even briefly, that we hold power within ourselves, that we could take power—but only a capacious ‘we.’” I’m in awe of people who have formed and found their place in these kinds of movements, who remind us of our collective potential. I’m tempted to call them heroes, then remember that’s not the point.
My favorite article I read last week was “Pick Me Up,” an essay about wanting to be lifted by Laura Bans for The Cut. So funny and pure—reminded me of old-school internet writing. Last week’s 15 things also included more to watch/read/listen to, and the rec of the week was dealer’s choice, featuring lots of discussion on that insane pronatalist article from last week.
On the podcast this week, Tavi Gevinson and I discuss her Taylor Swift zine and more. Episode out on Wednesday.
Hope you have a nice Sunday,
Haley