When in Doubt: Conflate

Its always essential to know your enemy. This fact is especially true when in a blink those evildoers who hate freedom commit violence against those who hold such freedom so dear. Our identifying enemies of freedom seems easy. Simply follow social and mainstream media. Be-headings abound. Like all general observations though we risk oversimplifying reality, giving to us a false sense of comfort. This illusion renders us vulnerable to other threats. History provides examples though of wise men who identified such other threats. We should express our gratitude to them. Otherwise our focusing too much on the attention-grabbing evildoers would blind us from other less obvious but equally dangerous threats to freedom. Those wise elites have reminded us that the identified enemies have accomplices usually in our midst. Those accomplices are working class people who believe in organizing themselves to assert their interests.  

ISIS posting videos of its barbarism makes such acts seem immediate, inducing the fear that the civilized have nowhere to hide. Before they allow their fears to overwhelm them, they should find assurance from examples shown by strong willed and wise public leaders. One notable example of such reassurance was provided by Wisconsin Governor and U.S. Presidential hopeful, Scott Walker.

      

Yes, the U.S. public fears the apparent global reach of ISIS. But, we should restrain our fear because Governor Walker informed us that "If I can take on 100,000 protesters, I can do the same across the world." Everyone knows that these protesters opposed his proposing Wisconsin's state budget in 2012 that ended state workers' right to collective bargaining. Predictably, he received instant criticism from the full range of the political spectrum. His making such comments presupposes an important lesson here, which is the tendency among some elites to conflate labor unions with the worst of evildoers in the world.

Governor Walker immediately lapsed into damage control criticizing those who "will misconstrue things as they see fit" and adding "That's the closest thing I have in terms of handling a difficult situation, not there there's any parallel between the two." He may have just provided a thoughtless response because forums like that don't allow your providing thorough and comprehensive comments that fully summarize your worldview. His example is not too unique insofar as governors seeking the U.S. Presidency struggle to demonstrate their foreign policy credentials. Their referencing their experience at the state level as evidence they are ready for the volatility and complexity of foreign policy invites easy ridicule from opponents.  

 Of course there is no parallel between organized labor and ISIS. So why did he conflate the two anyway? Walker's actions taken to end state workers' right to collective bargaining is more revealing about his worldview than any ill-conceived statement made about workers at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in February 2015. Walker is simply echoing a mindset shared by some elites who see something fundamentally sinister with workers organizing. What would the response be if one of the labor leaders in Wisconsin sought the U.S. Presidency and claimed that taking on Governor Walker provided good preparation for dealing with the likes of ISIS? Of course there is no parallel between Walker and ISIS. 

While Walker's main supporters aren't losing their legal rights to promote their interests, his opponents certainly have. He sees this as an accomplishment worth mentioning when asked about dealing with ISIS. Regardless of his post-appearance spinning, his response suggests his conflating organized labor and ISIS. Some elitists conflating their domestic opponents with the global enemy de jour is an established trend. So either you accept his spin that he misspoke or you don't. If he isn't actually conflating organized labor with ISIS, he still sees the former as an enemy worthy of his constant attention.

Historical precedent shows that elites do conflate organized labor with the worst menace to freedom. For this reason alone we can discount Walker's thoughtless theatrics at that recent CPAC meeting, but given the historical precedent of conflating organized labor with the worst scourges, we cannot discount elites' view of organized labor. The Haymarket Riots and the Red Scare are just two historical examples that helped establish this precedent of conflating organized labor with the most pernicious movements of their respective eras.

Immediately following World War One and before Fitzgerald's fiction lit our imagination with America as the Last Arcadia, labor unions' corrupted by Bolshevism threatened this idyllic nation. Walter Lippmann referenced a succinct example of conflating worrying scientific discoveries with political and social movements:

in the year 1919 a distinguished Professor of Celestial Mechanics discussing the Einstein theory: 'It may well be that....Bolshevist uprisings are in reality the visible objects of some underlying deep, mental disturbance, world-wide character...The same spirit of unrest has invaded science' [Footnote: Cited in The New Republic, Dec. 24, 1919, p. 120].......

In hating one thing violently, we readily associate with it as cause or effect most of the other things we hate or fear violently. They have no more connection than smallpox and alehouses, or Relativity and Bolshevism, but they are bound together in the same emotion. [1]

This conflating of two unrelated movements continued thereafter. This tendency to conflate unrelated movements and/or phenomenon in order to support demonizing one of them shows one example where our civilization hasn't progressed.

U.S. victory in World War Two did not sap its vigilance to fight evil, domestic and foreign:

'The problems of the United States can be captiously summed up in two words," Charles E. Wilson, General Electric president, War Production Board vice chairman, and later White House advisor to President Eisenhower, declared in 1946: 'Russia abroad, labor at home.' [2].

If the U.S. had failed to take preemptive actions such as its passing the Taft-Hartley Act in 1947, the Russians and their accomplices in the U.S. labor movement would converge in a coordinated communist plot to destroy the U.S.

Working class movements should resist urges to romanticize themselves as forging a path to a worker's paradise. 19th and early 20th century nostalgia is foolish. I see no signs of their indulging in such delusions. But, because the powerful still conflate working class movements with scourges and barbarians, working class persons must find their voice as necessary to prevent their being demonized. They don't need to present themselves as angels; equally important, they must resist their being presented as demons. They need to fight being conflated with caricatured and cliched images. They just need to assert they are human. Sounds simple. But, this observation is no simpler than elites' rhetoric used to dehumanize working classes through conflated images.

Know thyself...Resist your opponents' efforts to define you.   

1. Lippmann, Walter, Public Opinion. 1921. pages 112-117 of 301. Kindle edition.

2. Noble, David F. Forces of Production: A Social History of History of Industrial Automation. Transactions Publishers. New Brunswick, New Jersey. 2011. p.3.