Krystal Ball: Working-Class Leaders like Chris Smalls Don't Need Your Advice
Amazon union leader Christian Smalls recently went on the top-rated cable public affairs show of Tucker Carlson on FOX News to discuss he and his union’s battles to receive recognition and more fair treatment from the giant corporation. Because Carlson is a fascist, FOX News is awful, and because liberal Democrats refuse to acknowledge their own party’s and media outlets’ lying, and fascistic modus operandi, Smalls received criticism for appearing on Carlson’s show from powerful White liberals.
Krystal Ball responded to that hypocritical condescension in a video essay (below) on her Breaking Points show. In it, Ball rejects the notion that working-class activists Small needs any advice from the professional managerial class who’ve failed to produce any meaningful victories for the working-class and poor, while also discussing the possible opportunities to use even bad-faith corporate actors like Carlson and FOX News to appeal to regular people and expose them to important arguments like that of union protection being necessary for workers.
“Tucker clearly most interested in the AOC rift angle. And, as I’ve shown here before, FOX News is so committed to attacking AOC that they will even temporarily pretend to support workers unionizing in an attempt to own her. But Christian Smalls is no fool. He quickly parries that point, noting that he’s got no ill will [towards Rep. Ocasio-Cortez] and that no politician showed up before moving on to the reason he wanted to do the segment in the first place; to explain to Tucker’s audience why workers need unions,” Ball says.
By being willing to go on outlets like FOX News, and deftly handling the likes of bad-faith, shallow-thinkers like Carlson, Small and other labor leaders can force pro-labor messages to be broadcast out to millions of viewers who ordinarily would never receive them on corporate media, Ball explains.
“Tucker, reluctantly, himself makes a pretty solid case for unionizing, acknowledges that he’s not in general a big fan of unions but that Amazon seems like it needs some counter-balance,” she goes on, before pointing to the efficacy of direct-action leaders like Small in contrast to the electoral politics and corporate media professionals who talk down to them.
“The Professional Liberal Activist Class will chastise working-class leaders who don’t abide by their D.C. code of conduct. And Chris Smalls, and the Amazon workers, and the Starbucks workers, and many more will keep winning whether or not a single elite cares to help.”