Learning to punch up

The vital nature of power analysis

We’ve all probably seen how Elon Musk refuses to leave Mar-a-Lago by now. He’s referred to himself as the ‘first buddy’ and is on calls with world leaders as he dines with Trump and gets drunk at the whiffs of power, the scent of which may wind up being stronger than the power he actually finds himself wielding in a few months. And Elon apparently has his young son X (short for X Æ A-12) on his hip often, for reasons unknown. It’s all a strange, plutocratic scene, as is the entire spectacle of Trump-land. But there’s been a particular response to the world’s richest man being glued to Trump’s side for the past couple weeks, a response worth examining.

This response to Musk cozying up to the president-elect that involves calling him ‘Elonia’ or ‘the first lady' has been remarkably widespread. I was briefly surprised to see it for a few reasons, but before we get there, I’ll briefly say: if these monikers have been your retort to this billionaire partnership, I hope you’ll stick with me. The goal here is for us all to be more effective in beating back fascism and oligarchy.

My surprise comes from a simple place —there’s so much wrong with Elon Musk, between his far-right views, his massive election spending, and the role he hopes to play in the next administration that I don’t see why anyone is compelled to resort to calling him a woman. And yet the instinct to reach for that language runs deep. As Paulo Friere writes in Pedagogy of the Oppressed: “Almost always, during the initial stage of the struggle, the oppressed, instead of striving for liberation, tend themselves to become oppressors, or ‘sub-oppressors.’ The very structure of their thought has been conditioned by the contradictions of the concrete, existential situation by which they were shaped.” It is normal to act in the way we were conditioned to act. It is normal to pick up the tools we were handed at a young age, regardless of their merit.

But, both to beat fascism and to move towards freedom, we have to reach beyond our conditioning. We should be clear with one another: we won’t beat the right by continuing to use their tools, their language. In fact, we’ll unintentionally reinforce their case if we use tools we ought to discard. Normalizing the casual mocking of trans people, the degradation of women that’s inherent in using feminization as an insult, the throwing of queer folks under the bus that comes with mocking men in this way helps the right. It does so by bolstering their bigoted logic, unintentional though it may be, and at the same time it hurts the people we need to be supporting and working alongside right now to fight back against imminent and present attacks.

Photo by Ying Ge on Unsplash

The good news is that the fix is relatively simple. Instead of reaching for what feels easy, the weapons built to punch down that we’ve been handed since we were young, we can forge and pick up new weapons with which to critique our opposition. These tools are already forged — people have been developing the analytical tools to punch up for generations, all we often have to do is a little internal work to learn how to pick them up and use them.

A simple way to summarize the ideological mechanism we need is power analysis. All of us already know that Elon Musk is far too powerful, and most of us see that money equals power, but a rudimentary analysis won’t suffice in a moment where scapegoating runs rampant, neo-fascism finds new ways to divide us, and the left in the U.S. lacks coherent power. We need to refine our skills, and fast.

One way to see where we need to go is by taking a look at where we’ve fallen short before. During the first Trump administration there was an almost obsessive fixation on his hypocrisy, for example. I’m sure I participated in it myself. You might see the theme of reaching for what’s easy developing here, and it’s only natural. The fascist movement isn’t interested in consistency, and their supporters don’t care about it, so we’re presented with endless hypocrisy to mock. And calling out hypocrisy might win over a handful of undecided people, but the far-right is building power and labeling them hypocrites doesn’t slow their march. The same can be said for approaches like appealing to their conscience, which does nothing at all, and mobilizing just to mobilize, which does little to build our power and nothing to disrupt the power of the opposition.

Without power analysis we can get stuck saying things that are technically correct, like calling out hypocrisy, but which don’t get at the levers of power or the systems of oppression. And we don’t have that luxury right now. The satisfaction of being correct is not a sufficient substitute for power being stripped from us. And the even more fleeting feeling that comes from slinging petty insults certainly doesn’t cut it either, especially when those insults reinforce the systems we’re trying to bring down.

Right now everything we do needs a power analysis. Who is really hurt when we sling comments at the world’s richest man which question his masculinity and rely on feminization being an insult? Certainly not Elon Musk or Donald Trump. And, in this scenario, what happens if we pivot to looking at the power dynamics? What happens if we deliberately call out the oligarchical nature of Trump’s circle and the harmful policies they seem dead set on implementing? What happens if we lay out the massive cuts to our government that Elon is salivating over as he hopes to gut our government and privatize countless crucial services?

When we identify these problems, and incorporate the question of real power into our every analysis of current events, we start to guide one another towards the ability to enact and enforce real change. When we analyze power structures to determine our approach we create the possibility of getting at the pillars and even the foundation of the systems that prop up and enable massive hoarding of wealth, concentrations of power, and the fascist movement we now find ourselves confronting. As this power analysis becomes second nature we become less likely to fall prey to the lies of scapegoating, the narratives that tell us we’ll be okay if we agree to throw others under the bus, and even the smallest reflexive comments that normalize punching down. We will build the muscle of punching up at the powerful and their systems.

Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash

Without power analysis we’ll be stuck calling out ordinary people while failing to build the capacity to challenge oligarchs and fascists. Without building power we’ll be stuck saying accurate things about what ‘should’ happen without any ability to make it happen. Without the collective ability to wield power we’ll be lashing out at what we can reach – and we won’t be able to reach our real opponents.

If you’re reading this I know you don’t want to be stuck taking swings at the fascist movement like a child who can’t quite reach the piñata. What we can reach is closer to us for a reason, and we should most often be embracing those next to us rather than striking them with stray insults meant for the ruling class.

So take the time to talk to people on a deeper level. Maybe it’s family this week, maybe it’s friends or neighbors or co-workers next week. Hopefully it’s increasingly the people you organize with as well. As we shift our approach to look at overarching structures, we can help others do the same. Take the time to zoom out with people – there are countless millions out there who want a better grasp of what we’re experiencing, and want to take action. Every organizing meeting I’ve participated in over the past couple weeks has been full to the brim. Every day more people understand that individually we can do little, but that together we can take significant action. And what makes that action significant is both building our power and striking out at that which provides fascism its power.

This all means we need to systemically take on the power of the super-rich, the organizing of white supremacists and transphobes, the deadly deportation machine, and any organization that would terrorize our communities. And to take it on many of us need to reorient ourselves. There’s no shame in that – everyone on Earth who fights for a better world should make a practice of unlearning just as we make it a practice to learn. In doing so we ourselves get a little freer from the internal shackles oppressive systems place upon us, and we become better able to take down these systems out in the world, replacing them with structures and organizations and relationships that free us, free our communities, and free people we will never know. So, as always, it’s time to get to work.