I’ve never thought it very useful to poke and prod everything Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez says, mostly because I feel like criticism of her often takes on a strange disproportionality, and is a proxy for deeper ideological disputes. AOC Discourse also seems to forget she’s not the leader of the Democratic Party; she’s one of 535 members of Congress. But she may be the most famous progressive in Congress, and a favorite punching bag of Fox News. This doesn’t, in and of itself, necessarily entail any added moral burden. But Rep. Ocasio-Cortez’s comments last week on the topic of Gaza during the Democratic National Convention ranged from insipid to actively harmful. They are worth discussing because they are a useful example of a mode of politics that has completely captured the far-right and the far-left wings of the Democratic Party, and Ocasio-Cortez playing into this mode of politics shows just how total their dominance over liberal discourse has become.
This is the politics of Feigned Helplessness. Democrats, we are repeatedly led to believe, are not a party of powerful people with the privilege and duty to help, to shape the world, to work for votes and constantly reassert and earn their moral authority, but a passive club of entitled do-gooders, bureaucrats, social media influencers, and human rights champions watching history unfold as they struggle to keep the far right at bay. Much has been written about the Democrats’ reliance on a related model of politics, Learned Helplessness—which psychologists define as a phenomenon whereby a person or group of people “continuously faces a negative, uncontrollable situation and stops trying to change their circumstances, even when they have the ability to do so.” The general idea is that the Democrats’ default position, because they’ve lost so much for so long, is concession, so they start every political fight with lowered expectations, thus moving our politics rightward.
And while this is no doubt partly true, I think something deeper and more sinister is going on. I think there’s increasingly an element of Feigned Helplessness—a posture, an agreed- upon framework, an increasingly go-to path of least resistance. This is especially true on the subject of genocide in Gaza and Democrats’ continued arming of it.
Everyone is an intern, no one knows who’s really in charge, and while there’s often a manager to talk to, the manager’s manager remains elusive.
The animating element behind most liberal discourse is the avoidance of ideology and expressing ideological preferences. Instead, what our center-left media feeds us is an elaborate regime of excuse-making, process issues, burden-shifting, and insistence upon powerful Democrats’ alleged lack of agency. Everyone is an intern, no one knows who’s really in charge, and while there’s often a manager to talk to, the manager’s manager remains elusive. This makes sense: Ideology is messy, it’s bad for politicians’ careers, and—because politicians are disproportionately lawyers—it’s simply not their preferred language. From college they are inoculated against viewing themselves as ideological agents, but rather as technocratic managers of a system that works well—even if it needs tweaking and better rules.
Let’s begin with an interview Rep. Ocasio-Cortez gave New York City Councilperson Chi Ossé during the DNC. It’s a particularly cynical and bleak example of this mode of politics that’s worth using as an object lesson in how Feigned Powerlessness limits debate and protects reactionary positions. Asked about Harris’ refusal to meet the baseline demands of the Palestinian civil society, the Uncommitted movement, and seven major labor unions, all calling for an arms embargo, Ocasio-Cortez gives a defeated, meandering answer loaded with contestable assumptions:
Ocasio-Cortez simply accepting the premise that Harris’ position of refusing to support an arms embargo (e.g. use actual leverage to end genocide) is a fixed feature of the universe—like the speed of light or the gravitational constant—reduces Gaza to a trolley problem of oppressed people competing for support, and is a very blinkered framing that removes all agency from Harris. The dilemma she lays out in the clip, while superficially sensible, is not a law of the universe. It isn’t an inherent feature of the world imposed on Democrats by an outside force. It isn’t imposed by Republicans. Biden can end this perverse trolley problem overnight with a simple phone call. Harris can appease voters angry about her pledge to continue arming genocide in Gaza by simply not arming genocide. We don’t have to pit oppressed people stateside against oppressed people in Gaza and elsewhere. It’s a false choice created entirely by the administration and the Democratic candidate.
Rather than treating Harris’ pro-genocide policy commitments as an unchangeable law of nature, and placing the onus on powerless voters to simply suck it up, progressive electeds ought to reframe the issue altogether. The moral and useful response to the question of Harris’ indefensible Gaza policy is, “Harris should do the right thing and back an arms embargo and render this dilemma a non sequitur. Justice in Gaza and justice in the United States for oppressed communities need not be in competition with each other.”
Certainly this would be a perfectly reasonable answer. It’s not needlessly combative, it doesn’t speak ill of the President or Vice President, it’s not snarky or dismissive. It simply wishes she do the right thing without accepting her pro-genocide policy as something outside her control.
By running with the premise that months more of suffering and death in Gaza is baked in, all of the agency is placed upon faceless voters rather than the most powerful humans on earth. Why are maimed children in Gaza being pitted against trans kids being oppressed in Texas as if these are the only two options? This is a dilemma entirely of Harris’ making, and she can end it at any time.
But the politics of Feigned Helplessness reign supreme in liberal discourse. The burden is not on Harris to switch course, to reject Biden’s manifestly horrific and—by Rep. Ocasio-Cortez’s own admission—genocidal policy. The burden is on angry and disillusioned voters to suck it up and pull the lever because if they don’t, we are extorted, they’ll have the same genocide anyway, plus other bad things.
But, Harris has power. She has agency, and, more importantly, she has the ability to radically alter the course of the lives of millions of people in Gaza in a matter of days by simply doing the obviously right thing.
The moral and useful response to the question of Harris’ indefensible Gaza policy is, “Harris should do the right thing and back an arms embargo and render this dilemma a non sequitur. Justice in Gaza and justice in the United States for oppressed communities need not be in competition with each other.”
Rep. Ocasio-Cortez is, of course, not alone. On no other issue have the politics of Feigned Helplessness driven the discourse more than that of Gaza. The vast majority of Democratic electeds still support sending endless bombs to Israel so their payload can continue to shred babies and unleash increasingly novel hells, ad infinitum and without conditions. It should be noted that a handful of congressional Democrats, including Rep. Ocasio-Cortez, back an arms embargo in theory. But only one, Rep. Rashida Tlaib, was willing to condition their support for Harris on it.
Democrats don’t want to own the inevitable implications of their anti-arms embargo position. With the notable exception of John Fetterman, who at least has the decency to rationalize the scores of dead Palestinian children coming across our timelines every day, the bulk of liberals who support the continued arming of Israel are too cowardly to own their support for genocide, or defend why they are backing a candidate doing so. Instead they try to bifurcate Netanyahu from the Israeli military campaign premised on collective punishment and mass killing, and continue to thread the needle of arming a genocide while opposing its more vulgar aspects.
Pursuant this increasingly untenable goal is a never-ending list of prefabricated excuses ready, at a moment’s notice, for intellectual installation.
You’re a leftist, or just a morally sane human being, outraged Harris and Biden refuse to condition aid to Israel at all? Don’t worry, there’s a revolving door of excuses at the ready. After all, those in power aren’t actually responsible for anything. The goal is to avoid the fact of genocide and Democrats’ support for it. The goal is to reduce any and all moral objections to non sequiturs, to avoid the ideological debate.
Harris is Vice President, she can’t undermine President Biden.
Wait, this is just a made up norm and not a real limitation? Okay, well, Biden is working on a ceasefire.
Wait, he actually isn’t? Okay, well, it doesn’t matter because Israel wouldn’t listen.
Wait, Israel has no choice but to listen, because US military support is dispositive? Okay, well, it would be electorally bad and we can’t lose to Trump.
Wait, an arms embargo against Israel actually helps Democrats electorally? Well, okay, but Harris is Vice President, she can’t undermine President Biden.
Rinse and repeat the excuse-making routine until you no longer remember why it is we even have a liberal political party in this country. The point is, no one is actually responsible for anything. No one has to own the consequences of the policies they support. Everyone’s hands are tied. Israel has gone rogue. The US has to arm a genocide or Israel will turn to China, or AIPAC will unleash spending or Trump will be worse, blah blah, on and on.
One element of this disempowering brand of politics is that those adjacent to powerful institutions—those in the party’s prime-time speaking slots, elected to Congress—present themselves as just another voter forced into the hard choice of Lesser of Two Evils. And while it’s true that the average person is more or less forced to pick a less aggregate evil, influential party spokespeople like Ocasio-Cortez, while not leaders, have some leverage, some influence over those asking for their support. But countless progressive electeds and institutions did not condition their support for Harris in exchange for a commitment to arms embargo. They handed it over right away in the interest of “parity unity” and moved on to the rah-rah section of the presidential campaign, which perhaps makes sense in some moral calculus (again, it’s odd to see the crime of crimes being treated as just another boutique ideological hang up), but it’s very clear that—even in the event they could have potentially exercised power and joined with their colleague Rep. Rashida Tlaib in conditioning endorsements in exchange for commitments on Gaza—our progressive champions avoided power like it was a hitchhiker with pets.
While it’s true that the average person is more or less forced to pick a less aggregate evil, influential party spokespeople like Ocasio-Cortez, while not leaders, have some leverage, some influence over those asking for their support.
This bizarre theater of Feigned Helplessness was also reflected in Bernie Sanders’ DNC prime-time speech. The Vermont senator got favorable write-ups for simply “calling for a ceasefire” (something he refused to do for months, and then suddenly agreed to do but never explained why he shifted).
“We must end this horrific war in Gaza,” Sanders said. “Bring home the hostages and demand an immediate cease-fire.”
Demand from whom exactly? If Sanders is demanding a ceasefire from a specific person or entity, then he ought to say this. The person who can force one, and the person who can very likely force one in January (though, realistically, Harris’ support for an arms embargo now would likely compel Biden to do the same) is backstage. Go talk to them! They’re responsible, the people you are endorsing are responsible. Is Sanders calling for a real ceasefire in which the US actually uses its leverage and forces Israel to agree to a cessation of hostilities? Or is he appealing to the bad-faith, fake “ceasefire talks” the US is propping up to buy Israel time?
Unclear. Remaining vague is part of this broader regime of powerful people not being responsible. Of course, DNC speeches are vetted by the campaign, but if Sanders is going to speak in campaign-approved platitudes then he shouldn’t bother discussing Gaza at all. It’s an insult to the anti-genocide movement and, more broadly, everyone’s intelligence.
Indeed, the average viewer could watch the whole of the DNC, listen to all the follow-up interviews from liberals, conservatives, and progressives, and have zero idea what all the fuss was about or why Pro-Palestinian marches and the Uncommitted movement were even bothering to protest Harris. After all, isn’t the issue of a “ceasefire” out of her hands? Isn’t Biden pursuing some nebulous “talks” to achieve one? Haven’t Biden and Harris done all they can?
One expects this regime of Feigned Helplessness to be a feature of centrist and liberal discourse—it long has. But watching pillars of the electoral left, such as it is, embrace and employ it to win over voters who are justifiably angry over Gaza shows just how ubiquitous this formulation is, how grim our prospects are. Powerful people, they tell us, are spectators, standing by and watching horrible things unfold before them. They have no agency or responsibility for committing to open-ended arms transfers fueling an ongoing genocide. The moral demand is not on them, every progressive elected except Rep. Rashida Tlaib tells us—it’s on you, the voter at home. Your duty is to accept this as inevitable and engage in isolated acts of harm reduction. The burden is on you to fall in line, not on those seeking your vote to do the morally obvious thing.
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