Bernie Bros Gone Woke offers a provocative analysis of the Sanders campaigns and argues for the continuing importance of emancipatoryuniversality.
In 2016 and 2020, the Bernie Sanders campaign gave American leftists a path towards social change through electoral politics. In order to combat neoliberal and reactionary uses of identity, the 2020 Sanders campaign combined a working-class agenda of universalist policies with various forms of social movement activism. In doing so it compromised on universalist principles and socialist radicalism in order to appeal to distinct demographic groups and win the election.
Bernie Bros Gone Woke reveals how intersectional politics contributed to the failure of the Sanders campaign - a lesson that the organized left must learn if it is to challenge progressive neoliberalism and move beyond postmodern post-politics.
Marc James Léger is a Marxist cultural theorist based in Montreal. He is the author of several books, including Don’t Network: The Avant Garde after Networks (2018), Vanguardia: Socially Engaged Art and Theory (2019) and Too Black to Fail: The Obama Portraits and the Politics of Post-Representation (2022). He is the editor of Identity Trumps Socialism: The Class and Identity Debate after Neoliberalism (2023).
Publication date: April 25, 2023
Acknowledgements
List of Figures
Introduction
1 Democratic Brocialism
2 Identity Politics Is Class Politics
3 Progressive Neoliberalism
4 Post-politics
5 Outline of the Book
1 What Does the Professional-Managerial Class Want?
1 From the New Deal to the New Democrats
2 A Stratum without an Ideology
3 The Fall of the Liberal Class and the Rise of the Far Right
4 Left Populism as Compromise Formation
5 The Wages of Wokeness
2 Bernie Beats Trump, Clinton and Obama Beat Bernie
1 Millennials Feel the Bern
2 Whose Revolution? Whose Party?
3 Malarkey
3 Elective Affinities
1 Your Candidate Here
2 I'm Bernie Sanders and I Approve This Message
3 The Difference That Universalism Makes
4 Less than Bernie
1 I Know There Is No Democracy, but I Choose to Ignore
2 I Can't Breathe
3 Sectarians, Splitters and Fellow Travelers
4 When I Hear the Word Culture, I Reach for the Political Economy
5 Role Model Ideology
Conclusion
1 The Bipartisan Endgame
2 Meanwhile, Back in Wokeville
3 Political Revolution Inside
Bibliography
Index