The Spectacle of Orphanhood and the Self-Identifying Left[1]
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Arturo Desimone
October 30th, 2025
The behaviors of the present-day left can best be understood through a prism of orphanhood. The left’s repeating performances of self-defeat have their origin in the awkwardness of an existential condition of orphanhood.
We inhabit a society where most free association and public space is virtual, therefore disembodied, frantic, and unstable: the content of platforms can be effortlessly edited away or "unpublished" as if written on water. The blue-collar print journalism, books, graffiti and propaganda posters of the 20th century demanded much cruder forms of repression, closer to physical force, on behalf of those censors who wished to eliminate authentic countercultural spaces and manifestations of dissent.
Contemporary censorship, by contrast, relies on automated processes, as well as on the methods of "soft power". A contemporary manifestation of the "old school" of censorship can be found in the Venezuelan military state, presided over by the figurehead of Maduro.
"Smart power is neither hard nor soft. It is both." – Joseph Nye
The contemporary Western left (comprised of the Democratic Socialists of America, Xtinction Rebellion, Just Stop Oil, alongside more veteran organizations like Code Pink, media platforms like DemocracyNow! and their viewer-constituency, the leftovers of the fragmented Occupy and Sanders movements, the Green Party USA and the followings of Cornel West, Jeremy Corbyn, and Judith Butler) provides neither the patriarchal regulatory order, nor the "mothering" and nurturing spaces.
The contemporary left can offer neither a patriarchal nor a maternal consolation because, like orphans, the recent generations comprising the online left have no models for leftist institutional organization in recent memory.
The grotesque blend of these worst traits of both systems becomes a kind of parentless hybrid: neither a commanding patriarch, nor a nurturing mother is present, and the absence of both is felt more intensely.
Only through the authoritarian, welfare-state model can the leader be seen as a provider-figure, as "Big Brother," loved by his or her children or lesser siblings.
To transcend the current spate of terrible choices, the internet must cease to be the primary zone of interaction.
Footnotes
Title is inspired by Nina Auerbach's study "The Spectacle of Orphanhood"
https://scholarworks.uark.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2274&context=etd
“Jury says J&J Must Pay 8 Billion in Case over Male Breast Growth”
Reuters Article Link
J&J donations to groups like TransLatin@ Coalition…
HealthHIV Campaign Link
Arturo Desimone (1984) was born and raised on the island Aruba. At 22 he moved to the Netherlands and started exhibiting visual art.