Why so many progressives are bad at culture
It can't always be take, take, take. At some point you have to focus on giving back.
If you chat with anyone who works in or around American progressive politics these days, they will probably talk about a certain malaise that has descended over their work. Donations are down, enthusiasm too, and a reactionary, anti-democratic cultural politics feels ascendant.
This feeling was briefly condensed this summer into anxiety about the rapid astroturfed rise of Oliver Anthony's Rich Men North of Richmond. I saw so many people who work in progressive movements panic when the song was artificially pushed to number one on the Billboard Charts, and ask questions like 'why don't we have an anthem?'
My answer is that most people in progressive movements go about culture backwards: they ask how cultural creators can serve them, but not how they can create culture in service of others.
The dominant forms of cultural practice in progressive movements are primarily extractive. They take objects, characters, or relationships that are produced in organic cultural spaces (whether music, TV/movies, internet culture, etc.) and graft them onto some form of political message, and hope that these grafts allow the political messages to be absorbed into the other cultural networks.
For example, I have either witnessed or been involved in all of the following:
Organizing celebrities to make a video sharing a message
Jumping into meme trends to share a message (often too late)
Recruiting musicians to play their songs at fundraisers or concerts
Inviting religious leaders to dress in ceremonial clothes to appear at a protest
While each of these may result in short-term tactical outcomes (money raised, timely messages shared), it's unlikely that they will be generative. In other words: it's unlikely that anyone that did not previously care for either the people involved or the ideas conveyed will be reached.
I think these efforts are extractive because on some level - subtle, or overtly - they end up taking a toll on the reach and influence of the cultural objects you've harangued into your narrative. Whether by pushing away fans who don't already align politically, or dulling the rebellious edge of a meme or trend with earnest slogans, they are slightly lesser after the fact.
Most progressive political leaders are not ritual makers, or musicians, or even the kinds of people likely to dedicate hours to understanding the nuances of digital culture needed to be effective meme-makers. All of these are skills that require time and a particular disposition, neither of which tend to fit into the schedule and skill set of busy people focused on movements.
Culture is communication in the context of ritual, tradition, and personalities - not just images, messages, or even stories. Just putting a message in front of more people via a willing cultural amplifier isn't really building deep conviction that drives people to stay connected to you.
Shifting towards doing cultural work in a way that is generative rather than extractive requires a shift in mindset for organizers. The priority should be to value attentiveness and humility in order to create something that meets the emotional needs of your audience, in order to draw them into closer relationship with your values and institutions.
I think of this kind of creation as an act of service. Service is a mindset that enhances understanding by asking what people need in a given moment, and creating in ways that builds energy and goodwill. In a service framework, cultural work is an attractor, not an extractor.
Examples of generative cultural practices could include:
The Pride Flag, which served the need of LGBTQ+ people to have a positive, unifying symbol to identify themselves at a moment where public expressions of queerness were discouraged by violence or other forms of marginalization.
The development of 'Pepe' memes in far-right digital communities, which served the emotional needs of young mostly white men upset at the progress of movements against sexual violence and racism, providing them a semi-secret, humorous language to disguise their message and reach a wider potential audience.
Streamers, and YouTube creators like Hasan Piker, or Contrapoints that invest in sympathetic, original communication with their audience, meeting the needs of people who have been activated by the events of the past half-decade but want to explore questions or concerns before deepening their commitment.
The goal of cultural creation should be to create something that people truly love because it adds to their sense of well being or purpose in the world. Projects that seek to enhance culture, not just extract meanings from it, will sustain themselves and their participants to continue making change for the long haul.
I think this is at the core of the success of the right wing message machine over the past few years. They are not making things of enduring beauty or grace, but they are creating trusted networks that provide their audience things of real value.
Building up characters and communicators like Oliver Anthony or Ben Shapiro means that you can shape a conversation in a way that just pivoting out of other projects does not. They are people who can be validators, interviewees, and producers. Making memes like Pepe that can define an in-group and build genuine alignment among people with otherwise disparate values. Once you know the in-code, you feel less lonely in an alienating media environment.
These may not seem like things of real value but they are to their audience. They are giving back, in addition to driving attention for a particular purpose. That should be the goal of truly transformative cultural politics.