The realignment of left and right is something that we talk about a lot on this podcast, as we try to make sense of the current moment. This political shakeup is producing new politics, new alliances, and new conversations.
To keep up with the pace of such shifts, Lean Out is now expanding to two episodes a week, to better document these developments in real time. I’ll still be interviewing an author every week, but now I will also be interviewing a journalist — about a newly-published piece that’s making waves in the culture.
This week we ask: What happens when a man of the right hits a leftist labour conference?
We’ll be discussing a provocative new piece, “What the Right Doesn’t Get About the Labor Left.”
Sohrab Ahmari is a founder and editor of Compact Magazine, a new radical American journal. He’s a prominent conservative commentator and the author of several non-fiction books, including The Unbroken Thread: Discovering the Wisdom of Tradition in an Age of Chaos. Sohrab Ahmari is my guest, to kick off this new series.
'What the Right Doesn't Get About the Labor Left'
The problem here is that the labor unions are not the same as labor. In the US the unions are political action entities that connect with Democrats. And Democrats are the primary supporters of the globalist project that exports good American jobs and imports cheap non-union labor from their open borders position.
That is the disconnect in the political-media mythology related to the left and labor unions. Previously the Democrats were aligned with labor and the Republicans with business... primarily big business. Small business seemed split between the Democrats and Republicans. The big business, including banking and Wall Street, alignment has flipped to Democrats... with establishment Republicans holding on to some shreds of old industries like organic energy. Unions are still aligned with Democrats, but Democrat politics are generally against the interest of American labor. Also, small business is also under attack by Democrat policies.
People are waking up to this, and there is a shift of labor and small business looking to the new Republican party. Big business and union leadership are still married to Democrats.
I think the more interesting discussion would have been the disconnect between the left and working class they claim to represent, but whose members vote increasingly against the recommendations of union leadership.