In 2018, the late poet Benjamin Zephaniah remarked that communities have lost confidence in governing aspects of their own lives. Amidst the mass uprisings across Europe and beyond, dubbed “the Gen Z revolt”, I couldn’t agree more. We, as a class, have lost confidence in ourselves to lead.
When Bangladeshi students seized the Presidential Palace during the July Uprisings and overthrew the government, there was a momentary opportunity for genuine people’s rule. Instead, not knowing what to do, protesters surrendered control to an interim government composed of military officers and technocrats. In Chile, Gabriel Boric played a leading role in the student uprisings of 2011, yet his term as President was marked by compromise and ultimately capitulation to neoliberalism, paving the way for the return of right-wing rule.
Now, as these scenes unfold in France and Italy, protesters run the risk of repeating the same outcome. Many are looking to Mélenchon’s La France Insoumise (LFI) to advance the demands of the street movement at the ballot box next April, but current projections are not favourable.
The de facto collapse of Your Party following infighting between its leaders and, more recently, the Green Party’s Zionism is Racism crisis exposes the fatal flaw of the populist left. When we invest our full, uncritical confidence in paternalistic leaders, we are condemning our movement to temporality. Neither Jesus nor Jeremy Corbyn is coming to save us from the ongoing capitalist crisis. We must therefore rebuild trust in ourselves.
To achieve this, we on the already converted left (AKA readers of Prometheus Magazine) must, as my good friend Lewis Nicholson points out, give average folk a reason to show up. Mass meetings are not supposed to replicate church services with preachers and pews. We are not here to judge people for what they don’t know, but to help guide them on the right path. Having been a member of a Stalinist sect myself, I can tell you that punishing someone for not knowing the correct lines is unlikely to boost their confidence. Secondly, we must recognise the limitations of populist politicians. As Labour’s 2019 defeat, and now Your Party’s collapse, have taught us, we cannot risk surrendering all political control to MPs, regardless of their clout or background.
