Every culture war is a class war

Their goal is to create a permanent, obedient underclass of disposable labor.

Welcome to a Thursday edition of Progress Report.

Tonight we’ve got a great piece by my good friend and frequent collaborator, Ida Eskamani, and then some further reflection on how corporate stooges and religious extremists continue to encroach on our freedoms. It’s a busy night, so let’s jump right into it.

Please consider a subscribing and/or donating to keep Progress Report afloat and sustainable. Far-right extremists are financed by billionaires and corporations, who invest in conservative outlets, think tanks, and law firms to advance their interests. We rely on forward-thinking readers like you. Please help us fight the good fight.

---

---

by Ida Eskamani

“Ron DeSantis is going after my livelihood.” 

When Republicans here in Florida began championing a ban on drag performances last year, it was widely decried as a bigoted attack on the LGBTQ+ community and a gross violation of the First Amendment. There was no further justification necessary to oppose the bill, but the remark above, said with an exhausted anger by an incredible friend and beloved drag artist, provided me an important new clarity.

“Girl,” I said, “you just class war’d the culture war.” 

It was the innate wisdom that can only be found in the lived experiences of the people most directly impacted by legislation. From that moment on, the hidden economic agenda within the “culture war” bills became increasingly clear to me. It’s often said that for far-right lawmakers, the cruelty is the point, and while that’s often true, their viciousness is also an act of seizing control.

Banning drag artists from owning and operating local businesses. Blocking Black business owners and workers equitable access to jobs and contracts. Dismantling quality education at all levels, through curriculum and book bans, hostile college takeovers, and limits to scholarships. Denying healthcare and basic public health to countless communities, including those seeking abortion care, trans youth and adults, and immigrants.

These bills are designed to target specific communities and identities, but in implementation, they all undercut access to the same essential pillars of economic security and mobility, especially education, healthcare, and wealth. As a result, these bills disproportionately impact the same group across all those identities and intersections: working people. 

That’s because people with financial means can pay for private insurance, travel or even move out of the state altogether to escape the impact of these laws. The people obstructed, rejected, and even criminalized by these laws are working people and those experiencing poverty. Criminalization in itself is a profit-driven agenda; incarceration in itself is a multi-billionaire dollar industry, and one that we all subsidize with tax dollars. Of course, because racial wealth inequality has been caused by centuries of structural and systemic racism in this country, it is the prosperity of Black working people most denied by these laws. 

By impact alone, the class war within the culture war is clear. But when you follow the money behind the infrastructure pushing these laws, there’s no denying it. 

The same coordinated network of extremist billionaires, think tanks, and corporations pushing state laws to erase Black history and criminalize queer kids are also introducing legislation to privatize public education, bust public sector unions, and roll back child labor protections.

Right-wing extremist billionaires like the DeVos family, the Uihlein family, and Kochs, and the front groups they finance like the Foundation for Government Accountability, The Heritage Foundation, the Alliance Defending Freedom and American Legislative Exchange Council, are just a few of the players involved in this strategy. While rigging the economy to the benefit with model legislation, this same network is dismantling our freedom to vote, fueling election denial conspiracies, and pushing for a radical rewrite of the US constitution.

The reality is that for decades, billionaires, major corporations, and their elected allies in state legislatures have moved forward a strategy to eliminate oversight and consolidate their economic and political power, further enriching themselves with our tax dollars while widening racial, gender, and economic disparities in our states.

Their goal is to create a permanent, obedient underclass of disposable labor to protect their profits and political power. The “culture wars” are not separate from this effort; they are part of the strategy to concentrate control of our economy and democracy in the hands of the elite few.

Yet that’s rarely the story told. We’re often advised to pivot away from the “culture wars,” rather than center those most impacted. We’re told corporations like Disney can save us while they simultaneously evade their taxes and underpay their workers. Meanwhile, the right-wing billionaire class leverages a populist narrative claiming to take on corporate elites and the “corporate kingdom,” while their laws blatantly undermine working people’s freedoms. They maintain the status quo, fracture the working class and embolden a dangerous white supremacist base. 

Our opponents don’t want us to center the class war within the culture wars because they know they can’t beat a united working class. Time and time again, workers across the country are told by bosses their demands will never be met. And time and time again, through strikes, picket lines, direct action, storytelling, and door-to-door organizing — workers make the impossible reality. Solidarity is our superpower and across race, gender, borders, and movements, if we build it, we will win. 

Ida V. Eskamani is an organizer and advocate who calls Orlando, Florida home. All views reflected in this piece are her own. 

It’s been three weeks since I underwent open-heart surgery, an enormous and enormously complicated procedure that my cardiologist today deemed a total success. The first follow-up appointment after discharge is always nerve-wracking, so while I still have a long way to go in my rehab, today’s news came as a very big relief.

In era of healthcare price-gouging and rising Christofascism, it is becoming a privilege to be able to visit a doctor’s office without some stranger weighing in on your most personal and pressing medical decisions.

When I got home from the hospital last week, I found a letter from my insurance company, dated February 1st, informing me that it had approved my surgery, which took place on February 1st. No one from Anthem ever indicated that prior authorization was required for the surgery, so the letter was a reminder that we really are at the mercy of these for-profit bureaucracies.

This corporate eagerness to play god is a uniquely American phenomenon, whereas the growing willingness of elected officials to impose their primitive and fanatical vision of god’s will puts us in league with repressive theocracies. In Alabama, the far-right state Supreme Court decided earlier this week that frozen embryos are considered children, a preposterous claim that has already had catastrophic consequences.

Three IVF clinics in the state have already paused operations, leaving many families twisting in the wind in the middle of what is already a long, arduous, and expensive process filled with uncertainty.

The court’s chief justice, Tom Parker, is a religious extremist whose concurring opinion cited Thomas Aquinas, John Calvin, and other religious leaders before reaching the conclusion that “human life cannot be wrongfully destroyed without incurring the wrath of a holy God, who views the destruction of His image as an affront to Himself.”

Parker repeatedly references the “sanctity of life” in his opinion, indicating just how little these powerful zealots understand about the world they seek to control. IVF is often the last option for people who are desperate to start or expand their families, and denying them that opportunity isn’t just an act of cruelty, but for religious fanatics concerned with protecting and glorifying life, it is an act of idiotic hypocrisy. They are dismantling families, not protecting their values.

It would be a waste of time and effort to present such a logical counterpoint to the Christofascist set, because its adherents do not seek enlightenment or moral consistency. Their goal is control, not consecration, and should Republicans win in November, or even simply maintain unchallenged control of the judiciary, Alabama will just be the start.

---

Wait, Before You Leave!

Progress Report has raised over $7 million dollars for progressive candidates and causes, breaks national stories about corrupt politicians, and delivers incisive analysis, and goes deep into the grassroots.

This is a second full-time job, and I’m looking to expand. There are no corporations, dark money think tanks, or big grants sponsoring this work. It’s all people-powered. So, I need your help.

For just $6 a month, you can buy a premium subscription that includes premium member-only newsletters with original reporting and analysis.

You can also make a one-time donation to Progress Report’s GoFundMe campaign — doing so will earn you a shout-out in the next weekend edition of the newsletter!