Education as Diversion - Addressing Right Wing Populism and Left Wing Classism
It's time to have an earnest discussion about the rise of right wing figures like Matt Walsh. If you're unfamiliar with the name, Matt Walsh is a figure who has caused waves due to his openly aggressive stance against transpeople and his associated beliefs. The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) labeled Walsh as one of the "peddlers of fear and disinformation about LGBTQ people" following the horrendous Club Q mass shooting in November 2022.
Walsh's response to the tragic event? He stated, "if it's causing this much chaos and violence, why do you insist on continuing to do it?"—a sentiment that Jeet Heer from The Nation saw as "implicitly a threat." Walsh's rhetoric implies a new culture of violence, casting LGBTQ people as the target. He has also frequently linked queer and transpeople to pedophilia—a baseless and harmful accusation. There's no debating the clarity of his positions: he openly identifies as a Christian fascist and possesses views akin to those of Nazi ideology. These are his beliefs, and they are as horrifying as they are unequivocal. I am not being hyperbolic when I say that he would be gleeful to see queer people like myself marched into a new Auschwitz, Michael Knowles said it himself at CPAC "eradicate transgenderism." The same words echoed by the Nazi party, who systemically genocided homosexuals, transpeople along with Jews, Slavs and Roma.
However, this post isn't about dissecting the absurdity of Walsh's views. I assume, as a reader of my blog, you already recognize their lack of merit. Instead, let's talk about the darker question—how someone with such vitriolic views has amassed a substantial following.
Surprisingly, it's not merely his inflammatory rhetoric that attracts people—it's the persona he's cultivated. Walsh, like many of these talking heads, presents himself as an "everyman" of sorts—an accessible figure who reaches out to those who feel overlooked or misunderstood by society. His admission that he never attended college is an integral part of his appeal—it's a badge of honor that grants him an aura of relatability. The problem arises when both leftists and liberals latch onto this point and use it as an avenue of attack.
In America, a college degree often requires a lifelong commitment to repaying student loans. It's a burden primarily shouldered by those fortunate enough to afford it. This privilege becomes a glaring class divide when it enters into the conversation. What about those whose families are too poor to afford extra-curricular activities or those who moved often during their childhood, resulting in lower academic scores? How about those growing up in crime-ridden, impoverished areas? These circumstances underscore that using college admissions and graduation as benchmarks for intelligence or argument validity is inherently classist.
This isn't to say that education isn't one of the most valuable tools in the fight against the right-wing, they wouldn't be defunding schools and libraries, banning books, and pushing for voucher programs that alienate marginalized students. I believe college should be free and accessible to all, so long as they maintain an academic level above a determined threshold, which would greatly elimate the class based barriers to education. However, it's crucial to recognize how classist rhetoric that attacks someone's education pushes potential allies away. When we challenge Walsh or figures like Lauren Boebert, the focus should be on their bigoted, unscientific arguments—not their lack of a college education.
The issue extends beyond these individuals. Many in the working class, myself included, often find themselves questioning their worth and impact due to a lack of a college degree. Using myself as an example, I also do not hold a college degree due to various socioeconomic factors. However, does this make my arguments less impactful? Should I refrain from seeking leadership positions within leftist organizations due to my lack of formal education? Should I remain silent and allow the "experts" to do the talking? These are genuine questions that have crossed my mind, in fact, when writing this, I was concerned that revealing my lack of formal education might weaken branding and arguments as a whole amongst my peers. I'm someone who has read theory, and has an understanding of socialism and marxist thought. I can only imagine the questions pondered by those who lack extensive education beyond the misrepresentation and bias in mainstream media.
Those without college education do face barriers. At nearly every job I've worked that has been "career" oriented, I've been the only one without a college education. At one point I was a team manager, promoted to this position due to leadership skills and experience. I remember one team member directly telling me that I did not deserve that position because I was not college educated. These experiences are not uncommon. In business journalist Jon Birger's, book Date-onomics, he states "if an educated woman wants to form a long-term partnership with a man of similar education, the numbers are stacked against her." One has to question the dubiousness of such books, such authors, such attempts to reduce the human experience to market terminology. The media, those within the capitalist consent manufacturing class, would love to see the working class further stratified, futher divided into the "educated" and the "uneducated", as if we are the Eloi and Murlocks from H.G Well's "The Time Machine", to different species that are more different than similar. A divided working class is a subservant working class, and education level has become another tool of division.
When we deride people based on their educational attainment rather than focusing on the merit (or lack thereof) of their arguments, we inadvertently alienate potential allies within the working class. Would you feel more connected to someone who condescends to you due to their privileged educational background or someone who empathizes with your experiences and circumstances? Right-wing populism thrives on this dynamic, attracting individuals who feel dismissed by the intellectual elitism often associated with leftist ideologies.The right has weaponized this sentiment, transforming populism into a powerful tool synonymous with right-wing politics. But populism isn't a political position—it's a strategy, and one the left must reclaim.
As leftists, why should we reject the concept of "populism"? In so far that, appealing to the population is probably a good idea. When I canvased for Bernie in 2020, I spoke with a whole lot of people that one would not consider the target audience of Bernie's politics. I spoke with pipeline workers, who would have benefitted from his free child care policies, as the work schedules made finding childcare hard and expensive. I spoke with gen xers who have been apathic to politics at best, conservative at worse, I showed them that Medicare for All would save them several thousands of dollars in deductibles and let them get surgeries they need. These people didn't have a college education, several of them were happy to hear I didn't either. Are socialist positions not inherently populist, in that they fundementally are about bettering the conditions of the population, while (rightfully) pointing the blame at the capitalist class? It seems to me that it would behoove us to embrace some of these political strategies, especially as the climate collapse continues to worsen. Do we want to attack the working class for being uneducated, or better their conditions so they can become educated?
Historical leftists would not have held such classist beliefs on formal education. Could we imagine Eugene Debs telling unionizing miners that a college education was vital to being a socialist? This elitist perspective benefits neither the working class nor our cause. We must remember that the idea that everyone should get a college degree is both a recent one, and one pushed by the very same capitalist forces we attempt to battle with. Again, it is not to say that education isn't such an incredibly important tool, but we must not forget what "education" under a capitalist system entails.
There's a reason why stereotypes of the "college communist" or "daddy's money DSA member" exist. It reflects an uncomfortable truth about class bias within our ranks. I've had leftists express shock when I reveal my lack of a college degree. We need to challenge these classist arguments, to recognize that they serve no purpose and actively harm our cause. Think about it, would you rather be lead by a tried and true member and supporter of the working class, who desires to further working class positions while not being college educated, or would you rather vote for a college educated Fascist? Ted Cruz went to harvard, does that make his terrible opinions valid? Any level of critical thinking shows the sheer silliness of such biases.
As we continue to point out and battle the contradictions of capitalism. We must focus our attacks on the bigotry, anti-science, anti-human positions of right wing talking heads, not their educational backgrounds. Because, after all, aren't many of our potential allies non-college-educated individuals? We can't afford to turn them away—we have 70 years of Red Scare propaganda, massive Rupert Murdoch owned media empires like Fox News, as well as the inherent rightwing bias of capitalism to contend with. We must remember that we live within a capitalist system, the horrid right wing view points are inherently supported by this system, the classist divide starts early, with fundraisers and book fairs, with college admissions and trade schools. We cannot afford to play into these division tactics.
Our duty is to represent the entirety of the working class, not just those with college degrees. By shifting our focus away from education as a value judgement, we might just start winning over the high school-educated individuals that conservatism may have claimed. With the value of a degree decreasing and its cost ever-increasing, it's high time we abandoned the classist notion of a college education as a marker of worth. Remember the "curse of knowledge," the cognitive bias in which a person with a deep understanding of a topic mistakenly assumes when communicating with another person, that they too have the same level of insight. Remember that even someone who is an expert in one field won't be skilled in another. Michael Jordan wasn't very good at baseball, and while you might have a college degree and a deep understanding of literature or engineering, you might be lacking in areas others aren't, even if they aren't formally educated. There are infinite variations of the human experience. To close with a quote from Captain Picard, “In my experience, communication is a matter of patience and imagination. I would like to believe that these are qualities that we have in sufficient measure."