NEOLIBERALISM AND ALIENATION: AN INTERVIEW WITH ANGIE SPEAKS
abeautifulresistance.org/site/2022/6/5/neoliberalism-and-alienation-an-interview-with-angie-speaksAngie Speaks is a cultural commentator and critic, whose popular videos, podcasts, and Newsweek columns analyse neoliberalism, popular culture, and the increasing problems of the left from a perspective both spiritual and Marxist. Lately, she’s written significantly about the problems of alienation and atomization in modern society, its causes in neoliberalism and identitarianism, and the “woke” left’s complete failure to provide an alternative. The following is an interview with her by Rhyd Wildermuth.
RHYD WILDERMUTH
You've been a very influential voice critical of the online left and especially many of the excesses and contradictions in thought which have come to define it. You've also spoken and written a lot about the problem of identity politics or identitarianism on the left, especially the way it reduces entire people groups into simplistic categories and seems to ignore other causes for social, economic, and political injustices.
Can you tell me more what you’ve seen, and how you came to this place?
ANGIE SPEAKS
I started making YouTube videos about 4 years ago in my early 20’s, during the rise of the YouTube “Left” political sphere. My videos stood out because they were not simply following the incentives in the left media at the time (dunking on conservatives and fear mongering for views and clicks). During the early period of my YouTube excursion, I already saw issues with the way content was made, promoted and monitised in the “Left Sphere” and how much of it was focussed on defining ones content in opposition to conservatives on YouTube, striking up adversarial discourses to generate outrage and attention.
I decided to curate my channel as an alternative to this trend, to focus on the psychological and spiritual impact of consumerism, commodity fetishism and all the other corrosive aspects of the neoliberal paradigm we all exist under. This has been the reoccurring motif of my work: a much needed spiritual and psychological excavation of the post-industrial age. I felt like this kind of perspective was sorely needed, not just specifically for the left, but for anyone—regardless of their political affiliation—who feels alienated from the culture we inhabit.
I had some success for a while, and I think it’s because people thought what I was attempting to do was novel and interesting compared to the sea of contentious and capricious content that was coming out of the “left YouTube” sphere. But then, before I could really establish myself, some of the hostility in the leftist YouTube sphere descended upon me.
I started to notice how the very psychological and spiritual maladies caused by neoliberalism were being celebrated by the “left” that I was adjacent to. Things like celebrating atomisation were normal, celebrating and embracing identity fetishism over universality and solidarity. Also normal was a contentious “will to power” in the media realm, which often manifested in attempts to “cancel” and defame heterodox media rivals in order to enforce a lib-left hegemonic line. My critique became more pointed and focussed on these trends, so it naturally made me the target of a lot of hate, derision and contempt.
I was swiftly ostracised from the left media fold, slandered and discarded en masse by my peers and those who I viewed as my friends and colleagues at the time. This was an incredibly difficult period for me, because I went from feeling secure and understood to feeling rudderless and discarded.
At the same time, my analysis also seemed to be resonating with people from all over the political spectrum, those who also saw the trends I was addressing but had trouble articulating the phenomenon or expressing how “now” feels. It didn’t take long for me to find my footing again as a dissident thinker, occupying a nebulous realm where political affiliation matters less than the desire to excavate and understand the current historical moment and to analyse the impact it is having on our collective values, our sense of collective purpose and hope.
I think part of the reason the attacks from the left were so severe (and still are to an extent) is because what currently operates as the credentialed, official “left” are really just the foot soldiers of neoliberal capitalism. They seem to exist to manufacture consent and generate moral camouflage for the current order. You see it in the way the left celebrates atomisation, in the way it prioritised identity narcissism over pressing class issues. You see it in the way the most revered thought leaders march in lockstep with the official narrative on every issue of importance, and in the way they demonise people who dare to question. From COVID to Ukraine, the left has failed to capture the sentiments, hopes, and fears of the working class they claim to speak for.
I kept beating the drum and kept expressing my concerns in my videos, on my podcast (Low Society Podcast) and in my social media presence. Despite being met with intense resistance, new opportunities began to spring up from unexpected areas. I was offered the opportunity to write for publications like NewsWeek (and others to come soon) as an outlet for my social and political commentary.
So that’s me, Angie Speaks. I’ve been in the trenches for a while doing the work to establish a more open and less hostile discourse where people can explore and discuss areas of shared interests and concern without fear or coercion. I hope to help people discover more about what they have in common, rather than hyper focus on the aspects of life and culture that divide us.
The general problem I’ve noticed is the issue of identity fetishism, which serves two purposes on the left. On a personal level, it is part and parcel of the narcissistic preoccupation with “the self” that is encouraged and incentivised by neoliberal consumer society.
“The self” has been the major driving force behind marketing and social engineering since Edward Bernays. Modern identity politics, despite its radical posture, is really just another evolution of this ethos. Identity politics serves the purpose of carving everyone up into atomised consumer identities, and we are encouraged to distinguish ourselves and to signal allegiance through vapid and meaningless signifiers. For a lot of young people, this sort of false solidarity takes precedent over real and lasting connections and social bonds. Familial bonds, relationships of affinity rather than identity ,and the true purpose and meaning of community are reduced to consumer demographics warring for prominence in a digital hellscape.
The second function of identity politics is to obscure paths to solidarity and class consciousness. This for me is the most pernicious aspect of the two-pronged spear of identity politics. It convinces people that they have more in common with people who share arbitrary characteristics with them than they do with the people in their community, the people they share tangible ties like social responsibility and material interests.
Identity politics generates the alienation that it claims to remedy a lot of the time, and the people who adhere to it the most end up further atomized, disconnected from the world and disconnected from the more meaningful and powerful aspects of themselves that exist outside of identity signifiers. It’s impact has been very tragic.