Critique Can Give Power Indigestion
How to create ideas that resist co-optation, Or, How to Avoid Raising a Pete Buttigieg
The essence of true critique is to unsettle, disrupt, and provoke—not to offer comfort to those in power. When critique is absorbed into the system without challenging its foundations, it loses its potency and instead sustains the status quo. Today, much of what passes as critique has been sanitized and stripped of its capacity to make those in power uncomfortable. Figures like Pete Buttigieg and Barack Obama exemplify this co-opted form of critique. They skillfully articulate societal issues—be it racial inequality or climate change—but their solutions ultimately work within the existing system. Rather than destabilizing power, their rhetoric stabilizes it, offering elites the appearance of progress while protecting the foundations of their control.
Cultural Hegemony and the Performance of Critique
Antonio Gramsci’s concept of cultural hegemony explains how ruling classes maintain power not merely through coercion but by shaping cultural norms and ideas. True critique should expose these structures and challenge the very foundations of power. Yet today’s political environment often co-opts critique to serve, rather than disrupt, the system. This is especially apparent in the case of Pete Buttigieg, a politician raised in the shadow of radical critique yet ultimately shaped into a figure who stabilizes power rather than unsettling it.
Pete’s father, Joseph Buttigieg, was a renowned scholar of Gramsci, deeply versed in theories of cultural hegemony and radical social change. One might expect that Pete, having been raised in this intellectual environment, would embody a radical political vision. But instead, Pete’s career has taken a decidedly reformist turn, channeling critique into solutions that leave the foundations of capitalism unchallenged. Joseph may have taught Pete to appreciate the subtleties of power and ideology, but somewhere in that education, a vital element was lost. Rather than embracing a disruptive form of critique, Pete learned to work within the system—to absorb the language of dissent without threatening the structures that sustain power.
Pete’s climate proposals, for instance, reflect a market-based approach that offers superficial fixes rather than deep structural change. Solutions like carbon pricing may appear progressive on the surface, but they ultimately preserve the capitalist system that fuels environmental degradation. In this sense, Pete embodies the very critique that Gramsci warned against: one that is absorbed by the system, stabilizing it rather than provoking it.
A similar dynamic played out during the 2008 financial crisis, when Barack Obama, who initially condemned Wall Street greed, ultimately enacted policies that preserved the financial structures responsible for the crisis. By bailing out the banks and reinforcing the capitalist order, Obama’s administration provided elites with security, despite the appearance of reform. This dynamic—where critique is deployed but absorbed without consequence—serves as a warning for how power neutralizes dissent, even when it emerges from figures who appear critical on the surface.
The Mechanics of Co-optation: How Joseph Raised Pete Wrong
Joseph Buttigieg’s influence on Pete highlights an important cautionary tale about how radical critique can be blunted when it is channeled into academia without the grounding of lived, radical movement work. Joseph was, after all, a scholar—deeply invested in the study of Gramsci, but ultimately operating within the safe confines of academic discourse. Pete, absorbing his father’s lessons, may have learned the theory but not the practice of radical change. The critique Pete inherited became performative rather than transformative, more a display of intellectual sophistication than a commitment to unsettling power. His intellectual upbringing became a tool for navigating elite circles, rather than a weapon for dismantling them.
This phenomenon is not unique to Pete. Many children of intellectuals and academics are raised with radical ideas in the abstract but are never exposed to the radical movements that put theory into practice. Joseph’s failure wasn’t in teaching Pete Gramsci, but in neglecting to embed that knowledge in the struggle for structural change. Pete absorbed Gramsci’s analysis of power and hegemony but turned it into a tool for navigating power, rather than challenging it. The lesson here is that intellectual critique, when divorced from the material struggle, can become inert—incapable of unsettling the structures it was meant to resist.
Disruptive Critique Rooted in Movements
True critique—the kind that gives power indigestion—does more than offer superficial fixes. It demands deeper, structural change. Movements rooted in lived experiences, such as Black Lives Matter, Extinction Rebellion, and the Fight for $15, deliver the kind of critique that power cannot easily absorb. These movements challenge the core structures that perpetuate inequality, exploitation, and environmental destruction.
Consider Black Lives Matter (BLM). The movement doesn’t just focus on police brutality; it targets the broader system of racial capitalism that upholds racial hierarchies and systemic inequality. BLM challenges the intertwined issues of policing, housing, education, and economic injustice—structural problems that incremental reforms cannot address. While corporations may attempt to co-opt the language of racial justice, BLM's more radical elements force the public to grapple with the systemic nature of racial inequity, rather than seeking reconciliation with power.
Similarly, Extinction Rebellion (XR) disrupts the dominant environmental discourse by refusing to accept green capitalism as a solution to the climate crisis. XR’s civil disobedience tactics highlight the inadequacies of incremental policies and push beyond the performative environmentalism that corporations and governments often tout. Instead of focusing on market-based solutions like carbon credits, XR emphasizes the need to dismantle the capitalist growth model driving environmental destruction. By targeting the economic system itself, XR pushes for the kind of systemic change that cannot be easily absorbed or neutralized.
The Fight for $15 movement, which demands higher wages and union rights for low-wage workers, directly confronts corporate power by challenging the commodification of labor. This movement disrupts corporate profit structures and shifts the balance of power between workers and capital. It’s not merely asking for incremental improvements; it’s calling for a reimagining of the relationship between labor and capital—a critique that strikes at the heart of neoliberal economics.
Resisting Co-optation and Commodification
In today’s media landscape, algorithms reward spectacle and surface-level engagement, often prioritizing performative critiques that seem radical but lack substance. Social media platforms like Twitter and TikTok transform outrage into entertainment, turning complex movements into trendy hashtags that are ultimately easy to absorb. As algorithms favor content that garners immediate engagement—likes, shares, retweets—they incentivize movements to adopt sensationalist messaging at the expense of sustained critique. This dynamic makes it easier for power to absorb critique, rendering it less effective in driving meaningful change.
Consider the example of #MeToo. What began as a movement to expose workplace harassment soon expanded into a broader critique of power imbalances that allow abuse to flourish. However, as #MeToo gained traction in mainstream culture, it became increasingly commodified. Corporate entities adopted the language of the movement while continuing to perpetuate the very power structures that enabled abuse. The movement's focus gradually shifted from systemic reform to individual accountability—allowing the underlying problems of misogyny and exploitation to persist.
To resist co-optation, critique must remain grounded in movements that demand structural transformation rather than incremental reform. Movements like Black Lives Matter and Extinction Rebellion are effective precisely because they refuse to offer power an easy way out. By demanding a complete rethinking of racial and environmental justice, these movements maintain their disruptive potential and force those in power to confront uncomfortable truths.