Why Glo?

Gloria La Riva and Leonard Peltier

I cast my ballot already this time. The most ‘comfortable’ vote I cast on that ballot was for the Independent local author and self-described ‘Eisenhower-Lincoln Democratic-Republican’ Scott J Raskiewicz for US Senate – who, like me, has been both a blue-collar worker and a grade school teacher. Raskiewicz’s platform calls for œconomic democracy, Medicare for All, education reform (reducing reliance on high-stakes testing), reinstatement of the Fairness Doctrine, enforcing anti-monopoly legislation on media corporations, and – most importantly – a restrained, realist foreign policy. He’s basically what the Republicans were during the Eisenhower and Nixon years, including the Clean Air and Clean Water environmentalism, but with an added measure of Laschian populism and support for local and worker-owned businesses. Raskiewicz was, in a certain way, something of a way to ease my crunchy-con / distributist conscience – given that he’s easily the most distributist-sounding option on the ticket.

I also cast a vote for the Greens-endorsed Toya Woodland, a Christian minister, activist and organiser with Isaiah, Justice 4 Jamar and Stand Up MN. Ilhan Omar has proven, unfortunately, to be a vast disappointment. This is on account of her anti-Semitic rhetoric, her anti-Armenian vote refusing to recognise the Medz Yeghern, her willing association with the ’Ikhwân grifters in CAIR and her general foreign policy alignment toward the right-wing intégriste régime in Turkey which most of her constituents do not share. Toya, thankfully, brings the focus much closer to home, with a clear stance opposing private prisons and supporting criminal justice reform, affordable housing, fixing local infrastructure and bringing back local business. Her priorities are a lot closer to mine than Omar’s.

I am sure, however, that my most controversial endorsement will be the protest vote that I cast on the Presidential ticket: Gloria Estela La Riva for President, and Leonard Peltier for Vice-President, representing the Peace and Freedom and the Socialism and Liberation parties. I am also sure that this endorsement will ruffle a few feathers and probably lose me a few friends in Orthodox circles, given that La Riva is an avowed Marxist.

I anticipate the usual, tired and ugly pushback from the PO-and-OiD-type liberals who were all ‘I’m With Her’ in 2016, in whose eyes any vote that is not cast for Joseph Biden is an unpardonably selfish act and tantamount to a support of Donald Trump. My answer to them now is the same as it was then, and the same as it was when I refused to vote again for Obama in 2012. Biden’s record is simply against him on foreign policy (Yugoslavia, 1990s; Palestine, 1995 – and 2020; Iraq, 2002; Syria, 2011; Ukraine, 2014 – and after; Yemen, 2015). His record is against him on criminal justice reform. His record (and statements) are against him on healthcare. His record (and statements) are against him on humane treatment of immigrants. His record isn’t so great even on labour rights.

But I also anticipate even greater pushback from the American Orthodox right – which is still driven to a significant extent by white-émigré politics which are sadly out-of-sync with the common political feeling in the Rodina. How is this any different, I know it will be asked, from supporting the unholy murderers of Tsar Saint Nikolai and his family? (The more so since Dreher has been gloatingly shoving that shameful little historical incident back in the faces of the entirety of the American left – thanks to Bhaskar Sunkara’s now-deleted tweet which was, it must be said, both unpardonably stupid and morally deranged.) A stronger critique I anticipate would be: how is La Riva’s militant revolutionary Marxism any different than the social dogmatism, historical determinism and deadweight materialism that you have so busily critiqued in the past? Haven’t you gone full-on Raskol’nikov (or Ivan Karamazov) here? Haven’t you become a predictable, pædestrian leftist bore with this endorsement?

I could make, and it had crossed my mind to make, the good old Russell Kirk defence for voting Socialist. That seems a trifle too pat, though. It should not need saying, but I do not and cannot endorse La Riva’s entire programme. I agree with about 70 per cent of it, but try not to read too much into that. For example: she is pro-choice; I am pro-life. Unfortunately, as our culture becomes cruder, coarser, stingier, more cut off from our neighbours, and in fact softer and more divorced from any kind of actual struggle, we are also closing off to ourselves the opportunities to make real and meaningful reforms. If we Americans are, as Dreher enjoys pointing out (but has no clue about its import), on the ‘road to revolution’, then the hour is indeed later than we think. The question is, where do we place ourselves?

And my mind keeps going to the Russian catacomb saints, particularly Bishop Saint Andrei of Ufa and Saint Valentin of Kansk, who were among the first ‘red priests’. Both men were driven by deeply conservative convictions, Slavophil convictions, about the spiritual potentials of Russia and the ideals of harmony and sobornost’. And they were deeply troubled by the violent upheavals from the left as well as from the right. But when the time came to choose between the right-nationalist Black Hundreds, the liberal Kadets and the populist Social Revolutionaries – they chose the Social Revolutionaries. Bishop Saint Andrei was even (admiringly) called a ‘clerical Bolshevik’ – an epithet he at first claimed for himself and used liberally, but which he later came to resent.

The reason for this was: compassion. Saint Andrei and Saint Valentin both had a deeply-felt compassion for the lost, the hungry, the homeless, the prisoners, the despised. Saint Valentin’s Christian Brotherhood of Struggle was entirely aimed at mobilising both urban workers and poor peasantry to overcome financial and labour exploitation. Saint Andrei in particular spoke up against the Black Hundreds, in an almost Saint Herman-like way, for the Indigenous inorodtsy of the Russian Far East. Despite an initial enthusiasm for World War I in defence of the wrongfully-attacked Serbia, both men were driven by the refugee crises from the Eastern Front to adopt a homiletical tone of anti-war activism, even interpreting Russian suffering in the war as a punishment from God.

I share Saint Andrei’s and Saint Valentin’s distaste for revolution. If I am a revolutionary in any sense, it is in Georges Sorel’s sense that we need a revolution of myths, in Henri Bergson’s sense that we need a revolution of knowledge, in Oswald Spengler’s sense that we need a revolution of ethics, and ultimately in Dorothy Day’s sense (and St Maria Skobtsova’s) that we need an inward revolution of the heart. But who is it now who is preaching – as Saint Andrei and Saint Valentin did – compassion for America’s Indigenous, compassion for the incarcerated, compassion for the victims of American wars abroad? It shames me to say this, but the socialists are better about, not virtue signalling, but actually doing compassion – voluntary compassion, even, on an individual level – in many of these cases, than the soi-disant Christian politicians are. Gloria La Riva actually goes to visit and comfort those in prison. Can I say that of any other politician on my ballot, except maybe Yeezy (who is not in the running anymore)? Can I say that, even, of myself? God may be more merciful to her on the Last Judgement than He is to me.

The day may come – and I may live to see it – that those lonely few of my persuasion are persecuted by a surveillance-state woke capitalism, or by a full-fledged communist state, for being Christian, or that we are persecuted by a rising American totalitarian-nationalism for being ‘leftist’ (in that crude, caricatured definition that Americans tend to use today). That day may come soon. On that day I hope to have the strength of a Saint Andrei or a Saint Valentin in the face of it. But on this day, now, in the year 2020… I hope to have the strength of a Saint Andrei or a Saint Valentin to stand against a lack of compassion and a lack of brotherhood, even if it is merely in a symbolic way like this.