Upstream - Sanders, Clinton, and Corbyn with Richard Seymour

Episode Date: July 12, 2016

"The mirror of democracy is cracked and warped and people no longer recognize their reflection in it." Where should the Bernie Movement go after the campaign is over? Why would a vote for Hillary be a vote for more Trumpism? Richard Seymour explains it all.  This episode of Upstream was made possible with support from listeners like you. Upstream is a labor of love — we couldn't keep this project going without the generosity of our listeners and fans. Please consider chipping in a one-time or recurring donation at www.upstreampodcast.org/support If your organization wants to sponsor one of our upcoming documentaries, we have a number of sponsorship packages available. Find out more at upstreampodcast.org/sponsorship For more from Upstream, visit www.upstreampodcast.org and follow us on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and Bluesky. You can also subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

You're listening to an Upstream Sneak Peek with writer and activist Richard Seymour. So essentially, I think there is a connection between Sanders and Corbyn. I think that Sanders is slightly more popular than Corbyn, but I think they both come from a similar political moment. And how I would describe that is that for some years now, decades actually, the structures of representative democracy have been entering into a decline and increasingly a crisis on all fronts, party membership, voting, party identification. So what we're seeing is people are increasingly

detached from the structures of representative democracy. The mirror of democracy is cracked and warped and people no longer recognize their reflection in it. And that also extends to the media. The media is, if you like, the representation of representation. It tells us how the political world reflects us. but people no longer feel reflected in the media either so there's this general cynicism towards the state and towards the media and towards the old political elites and that creates a space in which new forces can come to the fore and these new forces whether it's podemos in spain syriza in Greece, Corbyn in Britain, Sanders in the USA, these forces are often very, very weak in and of themselves. They are not vibrantly strong.

They just happen to be able to exploit a weakness on the part of the old governing elites. So I think that's the connection between the two. And obviously, that means that they have some other things in common as well, most saliently of which they are despised by the establishment forces in their own parties. Corbyn by the Labour right and Bernie Sanders by the Democratic Leadership Council. As to the coming election, I personally would not vote for Hillary Clinton. That's just me. I couldn't bring myself to do that, because I think that her form of politics is far too complicit in the trends that lead to Trumpism. That is to say, I think the kind of corrupt centrism,

the pro-militarism, the sort of pursuit of neoliberal politics, which produces inequality and produces a lot of social misery, the mass incarceration, all the stuff that Hillary Clinton has been complicit in over the years. And the fact that she lies through her teeth. I mean, you know, talk about Trump.

Hillary Clinton is somebody who will come out and make up a story about her adventures in Bosnia. And when caught out about it, will make up another lie in order to double down on it. And she is not embarrassed about this. I find that an indefensible position. I don't see how she can possibly be a viable candidate for the Democratic Party. I think she's a candidate for them to lose with. Perhaps in normal circumstances, when they have much more control over the political system, they could rely on someone like Hillary Clinton. She's not a politician without skill. But this is not that type of situation. People are angry, and they don't want to be lied to,

and they're sick of being patronized to. hillary clinton for some reason she just can't help it she can't resist lying to people and she can't resist patronizing them as well that awful odious moment during her campaign when she said i know the young people aren't supporting me but i still support them i think if i was a young person in the united states i would find that incredibly condescending so there are all sorts of reasons why I would not support Hillary Clinton. But apart from the negative point, there is also a positive point. What I would like to see if I was living in the United States, coming out of the election, was not just the status quo in the form of Hillary Clinton getting an overwhelming majority or some horrendous outcome

in which Donald Trump sweeps to office by energizing his base while Hillary Clinton demoralizes hers, which is just as possible, I would actually think that if the left made a good showing, if Jill Stein got over 5%, for example, that would be a crisis for the Democratic Party leadership. And it would push the whole discussion a bit more to the left. And it would energize quite a lot of people. And it would give a lot of people hope for remaining organized. Because one of the biggest challenges now is how do you keep people organized who've been involved in the Sanders campaign? The Sanders campaign was often spoken about as a social movement. And of course, it isn't that.

It's an electoral campaign. An electoral campaign stops existing when the election stops existing. How do you perpetuate a social movement? I think that one way you could do that is to harness it to the Stein campaign for the time being and then link it into uh link it back into the other campaigns that have always been in the background here the campaign for 15 dollars per hour the campaign against uh police violence or black lives matter and all the rest of it so i would try to look a bit beyond the election itself see what kind situation, what kind of terrain do we want to face after the election.

Personally, I would like to see an energised, optimised left, optimistic left, and not one that felt cowed by Hillary Clinton, and not one that was terrified of Donald Trump. Thanks for watching!