The Online Left Goes Bananas Over Bananas
Since COVID-19, The Socialist Vision Has Echoed Life Behind The Iron Curtain
Since the COVID-19 Pandemic ended – yes, I said ended – the progressive movement has desperately tried to find another global crisis to latch onto to push for their delusional, sophomoric, and baffling vision of overthrowing Capitalism and replacing it with…something. This year, Mother Nature dealt them a good hand.
Recent wildfires, searing heat, flash floods, and ocean water approaching jacuzzi temperatures are flashing red lights and sirens reminding us once again that the climate is changing. We as a society didn’t do much to combat it when we were warned decades ago (Al Gore’s “The Day After Tomorrow” came out 18 years ago), and now we’re suffering the consequences.
Chasing global crises like lawyers chase ambulances, the online left sees this year’s climate warnings as another opportunity. Having failed to convince society to dump the status quo after multiple wars, financial crises, and a pandemic, maybe, they hope, the wild weather will do it.
And that’s where Tuesday’s “banana discourse” was born. You’re probably wondering what I’m talking about, so here’s the abridged version of the “banana discourse”
Some prominent Twitter and TikTok socialists and communists suggested that for us to combat climate change, and by extension the exploitation of workers in the “Global South,” we would have to stop international travel, and that includes supply chains. If fruits or vegetables don’t grow where you live, you would have to learn to live without them and only consume what is locally grown. That means no bananas in much of the United States and Europe. *This* is a key sacrifice we’d have to make (along with other sacrifices like ending travel, giving up driving, etc.).
“Extremely disingenuous to make this about whether people *deserve* bananas,” Tweeted a prominent socialist podcaster with tens of thousands of followers. “It is literally unsustainable on both a human and an environmental level to have bananas in most of North America. Sorry! Not addressing this shit is actually a huge issue I have with how socialism is talked about in the first world. Sorry, but there will be less stuff. That’s part of it. It’s worth it.”
Well, sign me up! A world where I can’t get bananas and God knows what else most of the year, not because we can’t get them, but because our moral betters are choosing *not* to export them around the world. After the revolution, it would be unethical for a Central American peasant to sell his bananas to Americans. Why wouldn’t I want to join up?
“People framing [the banana discourse] as a ‘decline’ in the standard of living as if there is an inherent human need for year-round banana access at every latitude that must be satisfied as if we couldn’t be equally happy with a more seasonal and local agriculture,” said another self-described socialist in a long, eye-rolling Twitter thread likening the importation of tropical fruits to “genocide.”
Who is “we?” Any world where we have less than we did before is a decline in the standard of living, whether it’s just the availability of fruit, or an inability to move freely. The arrogant, condescending dismissive of “not necessary” things as if they have any right to decide what is and isn’t necessary is not only alienating but shockingly ignorant.
When my grandmother had breast cancer, her doctor prescribed a high potassium diet because potassium is believed to inhibit metastasizing of cancer cells, especially in the breast. Bananas are the best natural way of getting potassium. Before we were able to export food and goods quickly around the world, people in certain parts of the world where food lacked necessary vitamins died young of diseases that we rarely hear about anymore. A global supply chain has not only raised our standard of living but it’s also raised our life expectancies. Socialists would rather we go back to dying at 50 for no other reason than because they came across a 15-minute video about former Honduran dictator Oswaldo Lopez Arellano on YouTube, declared that they now know everything they needed to know about exploited Central American farm workers and decided their next crusade would be temporarily becoming tireless advocates for their cause, 50 years too late. I doubt most of these people have even visited a banana plantation. I visited one in Costa Rica where I learned about how much improved the working conditions in these plantations are compared to a half-century ago when right-wing dictators suppressed workers’ movements with the encouragement of the United States. Ironically, the collapse of the Soviet Union opened the door to a far more democratic Latin America and one where workers were able to gain power that was stolen from them during the Cold War.
The “banana discourse” is just one segment of the larger idea of "degrowth;” a theory that social and economic equality can be achieved by unraveling the Capitalist system through a managed collapse of the global economy in a way that is far less destructive than a recession or depression. Degrowth seeks to restructure the flow and use of material goods in a way that is less damaging to the Earth and less exploitative to workers. It is such a ridiculously delusional theory that even Socialist-aligned publications like Jacobin had to say “Whoa.”
The “banana discourse” is not just about bananas. It’s about the genuine fear and uncertainty over how far progressives will go to ensure universal adherence to their vision.
As they do, Conservatives wasted no time pouncing on the “banana discourse.” The callousness in which some of these online posters, some of whom are followed by influential left-wing political figures like U.S. Rep. Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York), lectured people about the necessity of giving up bananas (and other “luxuries”) only served to reinforce their argument that the democratic socialist left seeks to emulate the type of society that existed in the Eastern Bloc during the Cold War.
The United States is populated with immigrants and their descendants who came to this country fleeing a life where they often had to lug their daily rations by foot through extreme weather conditions. Socialists think after all our ancestors went through, and what current migrants go through, that we are going to just up and accept a world where we have to live like they did. Are we going to give up all that we’ve done to progress as a society? Is this a joke?
The entire point of socialism was to harness the working class's collective power to improve working people's living conditions, not limit them to only what is deemed “necessary” by whoever happens to be in power at any given time.
“Overall, it would be quite sad to build a socialist movement capable of seizing the means of production only to prohibit from the outset the further development of the productive forces,” Matt Huber writes in the Jacobin article linked above.
People like bananas, just as they like cars and traveling around the world by plane or cruise ship. A truly democratic world where people have power means that the same people-power that overthrows the Capitalist class also keeps those things. As one of the degrowth socialists said on her Twitter feed; “Either [socialism] will require a decidedly undemocratic imposition and maintenance at first…or it will happen only when our consumer economy breaks down…the country is so thoroughly imperialist down its bones that we’re never getting a grassroots mass socialist movement. Even our ‘socialists’ demand treats.”
This type of “in the future we will have less” vision harkens back to bread lines in Soviet republics, and rations in war-torn European nations. It casts a shadow over other progressive climate-focused policies, like more public transit and biking infrastructure. Are we to believe that leftists want to create a world where we can ride bikes or buses, or that we’ve been forced to? What about their “15-minute cities” plan, which aims to ensure that every American can access whatever they need within 15 minutes of their home? Sounds good in theory, but what happens when people decide they want to opt to go beyond that and drive 30-45 minutes somewhere else, as we often do? I have everything I need within 15 minutes from me now, but often choose to travel farther because I enjoy the shopping experience at certain stores further away. Will we be allowed to or will literal roadblocks be preventing us from doing it? Sounds ridiculous? It’s exactly what some of these people (and elected officials like New York City Public Advocate Jumaane Williams) advocated for during the pandemic.
Further, it isn’t even progressive. This rejection of “not necessities” and “luxuries” and the dismissing of something like bananas as “treats” is exactly the type of thing religious extremists engage in. I understand the power “self-sacrifice for the sake of the greater good” has over people who lack direction or purpose – I grew up in the Roman Catholic Church – but if people wanted to live in that type of world, they would just empower religious fanatics who, at the very least, offer the promise of paradise after death. What reward do socialists promise? Most of them believe in oblivion after death anyway.
The “banana discourse” is not just about bananas. It’s about the genuine fear and uncertainty over how far progressives will go to ensure universal adherence to their vision. After all, it won’t work any other way. If you’re my age or older, you have either experienced or heard the nightmare stories of life in the Communist world. Not only are people not going to rally to such a vision, they’re going to become openly hostile to it.
I have my theories on how we got here – the failures of Occupy Wall Street and the Bernie Sanders/Jeremy Corbyn campaigns left a movement angry and embittered seeking revenge on society – that I’ll explore more in another article, but the latest discourse shows the online left has not only lost any realistic plan to gain power in our society, but their grip on reality in general.
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