Jonathan Smucker

Tell us briefly who you are and what you do!

I am a political organizer, communicator, educator, and strategist. I've spent three decades working in progressive grassroots social movements and organizations and have trained thousands of organizers and campaigners, especially in tools and frameworks related to breaking out of "activist bubbles" and connecting with broader, especially working-class, social bases. Most of my work has been with "outside" social movements, but over the past decade, I've engaged more with insurgent political campaigns too. I'm also a sociologist, currently finishing my doctoral programme at UC Berkeley while doing a research fellowship at the Othering & Belonging Institute. I'm the author of Hegemony How-To: A Roadmap for Radicals (AK Press, 2017) and the forthcoming The Many vs. The Few: A Practical Guide to Populism (Rutgers University Press, 2027).

Your session, The Many vs. the Few: A Practical Guide to Populism, will deconstruct the rhetorics of authoritarians (like Trump). Why do you think these authoritarians' opponents have been so unsuccessful in understanding and combatting this rhetoric?

Let me distinguish between the failure of establishment liberals and the failure of leftists, as they're quite different. To overgeneralise, establishment liberal parties and institutions around the globe have been effectively captured by and associated with neoliberalism. And, related, they tend to have an elitist disposition or habitus. Authoritarians like Trump attack them as condescending "cultural elites" and they often play into it (think Hillary Clinton's "basket of deplorables"). In a sense, liberals are still playing a game that is over, failing to meet the moment and articulate the kind of fights against powerful culprits that are needed to win back disaffected working-class voters. The left is, in fact, enjoying scattered successes that we can learn from and build upon; in the United States, the election of Zohran Mamdani is especially instructive right now, as well as promising candidacies like Graham Platner in Maine. But these victories are being pulled off by especially skilled and savvy candidates and campaigners, and these remain in short supply. The larger "culture of the left" in the United States, but I suspect in much of Europe as well, is suffering from a perhaps lighter version of the class-based insularity of more established liberal political parties. Again, to overgeneralise, the skills and even the orientation to effectively connect with broad working-class social blocs is severely lacking. I'll elaborate this more in my presentation and workshop.

Can you share something with us that keeps you coming back to the good fight or gives you hope?

Strangely, one source of hope for me has to do with the extent of institutional failure we have been living through. The people in power are out of touch and fumbling. No one seems to know what they're doing. Unfortunately, the left is often not much of an exception, BUT we have seen over the past fifteen years episodes where we show a surprising ability to outmanoeuvre our powerful opponents. Again, Mamdani's historic victory is presently a very fresh illustration and source for hope. A hopeful read is that our limited successes over the past fifteen years are likely to be just the start. Keep in mind that in many countries (definitely in the United States) the revival of the left over the past fifteen years followed a half-century period of decline, defensiveness, and marginality. It takes time to rebuild the strategic capacity, skills, leadership, etc. necessary for sustained mass mobilisation, and I see abundant signs that this rebuilding is progressing, with thousands more organizers, campaigners, and leaders developing in this unfolding struggle. When this generation comes to power it will be battle-hardened and ready to make big things happen.