The Cult of Personality and the Left
The phrase “Cult of Personality” immediately conjures up the image of folks in uniform marching up and down the boulevard holding giant placard with the face of this or that leader shouting hyperbolic slogans or songs in praise of them that we don’t associate that with the western left, and particularly, the Anglo-American left. It is, after all, what nasty authoritarians do, particularly nasty authoritarian in other countries, and not what we, sensible, rational left wing people, engage in. Slogans like “Chairman Mao is the reddest red sun of our heart” or “Comrade Stalin is the lodestar of revolution” or any such slogans will be contemptuously dismissed as an embarrassing relic of the past, something to move away from, to dismiss entirely. Yet, the left of the Anglo-American world, even among the so-called “Democratic Socialists”, there is a trend towards a cult of personality!
In the British context, we had people forming sectarian Trotskyists groupings based on the personality of certain leaders, Gerry Healy, Tony Cliff, Ted Grant, etc. And, in modern times, we had Momentum, a movement within the Labour Party dedicated to supporting, upholding, and defending Jeremy Corbyn, that he is a good person, that he is one of the least bigoted person on Earth, that his credentials are pure, that he is such a stellar fellow in that mild manner decent Englishman sort of way, etc., etc. And, in an embarrassing twist, we have Corbyn’s followers singing “Absolute Boy” and “Oh Jeremy” and shouting praises to “Jezza” with as such fanatical devotion that, with hindsight, we can see was entirely a mistake. The entire British left, more or less, lined themselves behind Corbyn, and rely on the personality of Corbyn that, when the slanders and lies came his way, and he was ousted from power, the British left is now left entirely rudderless.
In America, the Sanders movement engulfed our left, and eaten away at the energies of many activists, particular those affiliated with DSA, which became, for the past four years, an electoral machine to get the votes out for Sanders come 2020. The pattern repeats itself here as well, Sanders is a great person, he marched with King, he has been an activists for decades, listen to that salt of the earth Brooklyn accent, he is so authentic, just look at how unkempt he is, etc., etc. We are told to pay attention to him, not just for his social democratic policies, and that he openly calls himself a Socialist, but also to love him for his personal qualities. And, if Sanders is too mainstream for you, you have third parties which are basically organized around personalities as well, the Greens in 2000 was the Nader Party, the Greens in 2016 was the Jill Stein Party, and now in 2020, they became the Howie Hawkin Party, and with Howie Hawkin especially, they were keen to point out what a great person Howie is, how dedicated he is to Socialism, how he is Teamster and a Union Man, and how he does this and that. The same for PSL, organized around Gloria la Riva, the same for Socialist Alternative, organized around the personality of Sawant.
I do not mean to criticize these people personally, that is not the point of this essay, but to merely point out that we are plagued with personality politics, and this is perhaps an inevitable feature of the Anglo-American left. It is an unfortunate fact that our movement necessarily mirrors, to a greater or lesser extent, the society that birthed it, so, as we live in a bourgeois democracy where our elections are more or less popularity contests between different personalities- the youthful and vigorous Obama versus the dour and ancient John McCain or the elitist and out-of-touch Mitt Romney, the cold, wooden Hillary Clinton versus the venomous, toxic, but oddly charismatic and anti-establishment Trump, and then Trump again with the utterly blank Biden- so too does our leftist movement, stuck in its electoral cretinism, mirror mainstream politics’ obsession with personality by creating its own version of that.
