Ever-controversial breadtuber Vaush has, as far as I'm aware, most visibly developed the idea of the "Nazbol Vortex", as a warning to avoid it. The idea of the Nazbol Vortex is that "we could win so much for workers, if only we would stop worrying about civil rights for people of color, or LGBTQ civil rights, or feminist civil rights" and so on - stop being so woke! While there is legitimate criticism to be made of "woke politics" (and I mean the practiced POLITICS (although this is a pretty niche issue, all things considered, which the anti-wokers have inflated way too much), not the policy that guarantees and defends the civil rights of marginalized people), the particular anti-woke zeal of the Nazbol Vortex is highly dangerous rhetoric that can easily lead to fascistic politics. I assess that this capitulation comes not from a framework which emphasizes the inherent flaws of capitalism in continuously generating class war (surprise surprise), but from a frame of "insider vs outsider, anti-woke" politics. This is primarily because an insider-outsider framework is primed for a symbiosis of dissafected "leftism" with the far-right. This distinction is critical, as taking the bait on insider-outsider is pretty easy, and it can send people down a rabbit hole (the Nazbol Vortex) which forks away from class politics (even as insider-outsider uses the language of class politics) - these people are all over the web, and their rhetoric is initially attractive, but the rampant conspiracism**** it engenders is alarming. [Note: this isn't to say all insider-outsiders are going down the nazbol-vortex, this is only a warning that it is very easy to go down it from an insider-outsider perspective.]
A class-war perspective is pretty standard on the Left. The idea pivoting on a basic distinction that bosses extract surplus value from laborers, laborers are broke, and thus our interests are in conflict - more or less. In this framework, it is no surprise that "the left" is an outsider - this is a symptom of the cause. Notice there is nothing morally redeeming about being an outsider for this classic leftist view - it is not our "outsider politics" which is a priori important, it is just flat our politics. As such, we recognize that (A) many people are disenfranchised not just along class lines, but along other distinctions (such as race, gender, etc.) and (B) far-right outsider politics (in "normal times") is "outsider" for good reason. There is nothing inherently morally redeeming about being "outsider".
My criticisms of the insider-outsider framework should thus be evident. Shows like Krystal and Sagaar's The Rising (now they are independent of The Hill) highlight this framework - two ostensibly political foes find common cause as outsiders. The Establishment is "rigged against them both", and this is somehow a remarkable political fact worthy of an entire show. Yet their programs are almost entirely devoid of coverage of actual issues, and insofar as they cover them, they are somehow related to a "deep state conspiracy". This is evidenced by commentators like Jimmy Dore and Glenn Greenwald, who find common cause with far-right extremist Tucker Carlson (another insider-outsider to watch out for is Kim Iverson (idk if she supports Carlson or not), peddling ludicrous conspiracies like the petro-dollar). Why? Because they're both "outsiders" who rail against the "insiders". Wait wait wait. We can find common cause with an anti-immigrant racist who supports Viktor Orban?? (Answer: no)
This style of politics is quite dangerous, as it distracts from actually winning. While railing against "woke snowflake" politics (a stance I'm not totally opposed to in principle... except that it is a distraction to do so) as politically unviable, figures like Jimmy Dore will go on to suggest electorally moronic strategies (see Sam Seder's exposure of such in this debate with Jimmy Dore), such as supporting third parties and undermining "the Squad" (ie AOC, Omar, etc). Worse, in pursuit of anti-"woke snowflake" politics, Dore will even defend sexual harrassment (see his comments on Ana Kasparian)! This rabbit hole leads to both totally immoral and politically naive behaviors. So what is the point? What is the reasoning here?
The most charitable interpretation here (which I am inclined to provide to some such as Briahna Joy Gray) is that they believe that politics is the ONLY vehicle for change in the nation, short of violent revolution (see Krystal Ball's tepid response to the January 6th storming, or Dore finding common cause with the militant far-right Boogaloo Boys). Democrats are clearly not providing the change we need, and so no matter how crazy it is, we need to back something that isn't "the Establishment", because the establishment will never fix anything. Perhaps to say "unstable times requires bold action". This bold action should be constituted by brazen obstructionism by progressive Democrats (and their failure to do so shows their complicity in Democrat Establishment interests) and a political game of chicken with third-partyism. You need to hold a political gun to the head of the Establishment to get them to fix things. Aha, Democrat apologists, don't you see the Democrats are doing absolutely nothing productive??
Of course we see that Democrats are doing nothing. Of course, the retort that insider-outsider types loathe (because it's true) is that "Democrats are better than the GOP". Their reply is "so nothing will ever get done then." For a liberal*, this IS the end of the conversation (saying "well hopefully the Democrats get it together" isn't going to cut it) - an insider-outsider type wins here, and this is why this sort of political framework is pervasive. This is why we need a class-focused politics. What does this entail?
Class-focused politics accepts the ineptitude of the Democratic party as-is, and does not look to them (for the moment) as anything but a bulwark against GOP-onslaught**. No, a class-focused politics instead aims at developing the power of labor through unionization. We don't need to forge alliances with the far-right, as fellow "outsiders", we need to develop organizational strength in the primary way that has ever worked for the left - labor unions***. If the working class is organized it can be an enormous hammer for the masses, in a manner that is unavailable now. Labor unions (and the looming threat of working class violence, if not rebellion, in the wake of the Great Depression) are what forced the Democrats to go as far left as they did in the 1930s - it wasn't insider-outsider politics (in fact, try to find someone more insider than FDR!). It is only in this vacuum of a coherent working-class voice that this insider-outsider politics makes any sense.
This is all to say, when an insider-outsider asks "shouldn't we be mad that AOC did/didn't do X?", we simply need to reply "I don't care. So long as labor is weak, she is the best we can get - our individual activist voices will never be sufficient to push Democrats as far left as is required. Only organized labor can do that, because that has actual impact on the electorate. Your ceaseless whining about insider politics is at best politically impotent, and at worst aids and abets Republican efforts to secure power, which is objectively worse than Democrat control." Of course, we should criticize politicians when warranted, but we cannot expect them to save the world. They are politicians, not heros.
Does this mean that insider-outsider framework is totally bankrupt, and should be shot down like neoconservatism? Not quite - but it MUST be challenged, as it can result in wild and unfounded conspiracism****. It is politically useful in limited amounts, and is not fundamentally misleading (just misguided). Furthermore, this attitude is quite popular amongst leftist political campaigns, largely because they ARE actually-existing outsider races, and that kind of rhetoric has some appeal (and straight shooting it down might backfire and make insider-outsiders needlessly defensive). The main issue is it is not the fundamental problem, and we should do our best to channel that insider-outsider rage to a more accurate class-war politics (in fact it should be a goal to channel this insider-outsider distinction to class-war politics amongst disaffected voters on the right). This is critical, because an authentic class-war politics avoids the Nazbol Vortex. An authentic class-war politics acknowledges the intersection of race and gender issues in the matrix of social problems which persist today - go cry, anti-wokers! An authentic class-war politics finds no bed fellow in the far-right, because the far-right will always be antagonists in the class war, and in the overall war for civil-rights.
One last note - this same analysis extends to the pro-anti-American-imperialism framework (aka pro-Russia/Iran/China imperialism framework vis-a-vis their anti-American-imperialism geopolitics). This analysis suggests that if someone opposed American imperialism, perhaps Gaddafi, perhaps Assad, perhaps Xi Jingping, then they are defensible in virtue of "an enemy of my enemy is my friend". There is an obvious retort here - our actual support should extend to workers, labor unions, indigenous rights movements, civil rights movements, and democratic movements; in short, the people and mechanisms to empower them. This doesn't exclude standard foreign policy practice (ie, Lula's engagement with Iran's Ahmadinejad is not principally wrong, it is expected of nation state actors. But there isn't anything fundamentally redeemable or honorable about an actor simply because they oppose American imperialism. These qualities ARE generally present (not to say they don't have flaws) in democratic and labor movements. Notice how Dore often hosts Assad apologists (like from the Grayzone), or note Democratic primary candidate Tulsi Gabbard's Assad apologism. This a priori pro-anti-American-imperialism framework walks hand-in-hand with the insider-outsider politics, as it views American imperialism (and not imperialism and Capitalism itself) as a priori the "fundamental evil". Yes, American imperialism HAS been the pre-eminent evil of the past 80 years. But it is a specific moment of imperialism, and Russian/Chinese/Iranian interventionism suffers from the same evils.
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*"Liberal" here means a centrist democrat who is, in the present moment, neither immediately disposed towards class-war politics nor insider-outsider politics. They likely understand the gravity and uncertainty of the moment, but are nevertheless dubious of leftist politics to sufficiently save the day, and view standard politics, perhaps along with some contemporary style of activism, STILL as the most effective means of effecting change.
**For the labor-oriented, Democrats ARE tangibly better than Republicans. Republicans pass anti-labor laws, such as right-to-work laws, and laws which undercut the power of unions (such as SB 1268 in Arizona), and anti-labor policy, such as the gutting of OSHA and the NLRB under Trump. Sure, Democrats have been complicit in anti-labor laws and policy as well, but they are far more likely to support laws which help workers. This isn't just coming from the good hearts of Democrats, it is also because unions generally support Democrats... and this pressure translates into the betterment of workers' conditions. In this view, there is substantive differences between Democrats and Republicans. Sorry insider-outsiders, there actually is a difference.
***The anti-"woke snowflake" wing might protest that "labor unions often have Trumpers, so aren't you supporting my point?" First, this idea that Trump's base is primarily "working class" is a bit misguided (it implicitly supports the idea that the working class is disproportionately white and male, which is obviously wrong. Furthermore, many of the white male members of the working class are struggling in the wake of neoliberal politics and a weak labor movement which has left them out to dry. Insofar as they voted for Trump, it is not too surprising. This is not an endorsement of insider-outsider politics (and certainly not of Trump), but in fact is a recongition of the need for stronger labor to re-energize class politics). Second, as I mention in my parenthetical diatribe, the point of unions is to energize class politics. It is only in their weakened condition that right-wing tendencies have ground to set root in. There are many many remarks an insider-outsider might make about unions (not disparaging them, just using them to support their politics), and all I have to say is that those points are moot. Look at what the CIO did during the 30's. Everything they did makes sense within a class-war framework. Within an insider-outsider framework? Only symptomatically (and it is a confusing distinction - to the extent that unions have had influence on politics, are they now insiders??? How useful is this distinction actually??). It is like the "states' rights" explanation of the Civil War. No, the Civil War was waged over the issue of slavery - insofar it was states' rights, it was states' rights to do what? It is a second order, not a first order, explanation.
**** Why is conspiracism so problematic? I cover this issue somewhat in another post, but briefly there are three big problems. First, a qualifier - the left has plenty of reason to be suspicious of the government. Okay? But into the problems. The first is that even if true, conspiracies miss the main issue - in what systemic conditions can a conspiracy result in a consequential action? In the Gilded Age of the US, there was plenty of back room collusion - but this shouldn't be a surprise. The government was in the pocket of the corporations. While the particular details of the conspiracies may be interesting (certainly, I'd watch a documentary about it! - in fact, a lot of coverage on this site provides examples of government/corporation intermingling), they are not themselves the causal factors in the gross inequalities of the Gilded Age - that was the empowering of capitalists, the weakened position of third parties due to Whig reforms in the 1842, and so on. Conspiratorial actions are a ballooning symptom emerging from an underlying, typically structural, cause. The second issue with conspiracism is that if you predicate your argument on conspiracy - and you want to make a leftist argument - you better be damn sure it's actually true. Because if it's wrong, then what? Oh right, you should have been addressing the systemic problems, not betting the farm on an outlandish theory... and you look like a damned idiot when you're wrong.
The third problem with conspiracism (and this ties into the thesis of this blog post) is that conspiracism feeds and legitimizes a right-wing tendency. Right-wing rhetoric necessarily relies on some combination of (1) an appeal to tradition/how things "used to be" and (2) conspiracism. The former is quite obvious, and the latter is because acknowledging that something occured because of systemic conditions is to acknowledge that a problem could be solved with good policy (and not "Red Scare"-like tactics/surveillance state/etc). For example, addressing the Latin American refugee crisis requires addressing systemic issues - drug war, corrupt governments, climate change, etc. The right-wing CANNOT admit this though, as using the government to address these problems correctly opposes their core beliefs - blame for issues must be attributed to individuals, not institutions/systems (and therefore why they like to overthrow regimes as policy, rather than consider ending the Drug War - Biden is also obviously suspect here). So the only way to explain these problems? Either avoid explaining altogether, or conspiracism. You can hear this on Fox News pundits' shows where they imply that Democrats are nicer to immigrants (not really actually) to help get more voters. This is absurd, yet in the void of an actual explanation, anything will do. Therefore we have to be careful legitimizing conspiracism.