The Myth of False Consciousness

Is there any more ridiculous myth on the Left than that of the false consciousness of the American people. I'm inspired to write this by this quotation from Lisa Fine's Reo Joe: Work, Kin, and Community in Autotown, U.S.A.

"Labor historians need to stop treating George Wallace's popularity in the North in 1968, the Reagan Democrats of the 1980s, the Ross Perot phenomenon of 1992, the so-called "angry white man" congressional elections of 1994, and the importance of working-class members of the National Rifle Association during the 2000 presidential elections as aberrations, false consciousness, or "co-optation." The need to understand the relationship between a rural/working-class constituency in Michigan and right-wing extremism has taken on a heightened importance in the wake of the Oklahoma City bombing, where the Michigan Militia took center stage in the national media."

I couldn't agree with this assessment more. Let's look at some of the problems with the myth of false consciousness. First, there's no actual evidence for it. It is a red herring that leads analysis of American politics and history down dead-end paths. Second, it does not respect people acting in ways that leftist analysis doesn't agree with. It assumes that people who do not vote according to their class or race interests are voting wrong. Rather than figure out why they are voting why they are and believing what they do, too many people have focused on how to get them to vote according to their class or race interests as the Left identifies it. It's demeaning and wrong. Third, these myths hold progressives back from figuring out how to build winning political coalitions. As long as progressives believe that the American people are being hoodwinked by the Republican party we are in trouble. Because Americans aren't hoodwinked by Republicans. Rather, at this stage in American history, evangelical religion, guns, and sometimes hatred a certain vision of what the federal government does means more to people than their civil rights, than economic welfare, and than a federal government working in the interests of all the people. Now I don't know where to move from here on how to build politically given this knowledge. But I do know that we must get rid of the idea of the false consciousness of American workers for positive gains to be made.