Scab shaming has become a tactic of the post-COVID labour movement that levies social media to spread condemnation. The fact is, it works.
Midway into September, TV personality and liberal commentator Bill Maher announced that he was going to be starting up his show Real Time with Bill Maher on HBO despite the then-ongoing Writers Guild of America strike. The backlash online and in the media was substantial enough to make Maher reconsider his choice. Coincidental to that, talk-show host Drew Barrymore was looking to bring back her own titular series in September despite the writers’ strike. Faced with similar backlash, Barrymore also pulled the plug while profusely apologizing.
One thing has been made clear on what some call the post-COVID labour movement is that the general depoliticization of the public that underscored the ‘90s, aughts and 2010s is no longer in play in the 2020s. Not even star power makes you immune to not showing solidarity for workers who are dealing with increasingly precarious employment and a heightened cost of living.
Still, enlightened centrists like Maher have played tongue-in-cheek with thinking that the striking writers don’t have legs to stand on morality-wise. In early September, before the controversy of starting up Real Time ensued and the subsequent cancelling of the show, Maher spoke on a podcast with comedian Jim Gaffigan claiming “they [WGA] kind of believe that you’re owed a living as a writer, and you’re not. This is show business. This is the make-or-miss league.”
It’s not hard, then, to see that people like the pre-cancelling of his show version of Bill Maher in early September would view scab shaming as some form of cancel culture or wokeness run amuck. Maher himself has been a vocal opponent of cancel culture and wokeness more generally, as can be seen by segments from years ago. An example is when Ben Affleck was treated as a woke hysteric for objecting to co-guest Sam Harris’ belief – which Maher backed up – that the Quran was a book that in many ways codified the terrorist actions of extremist Islamic groups in the pre-and post-9/11 world.
But is scab shaming just woke virtue signalling?
Wokeness generally denotes the idea that one wears the mask of progressivity, typically in online spaces such as Twitter (or “X”), to appear morally superior to their political rivals. However, when the rubber meets the road, the woke don’t care much for the people they’re arguing for as much as their own reputation for having outstanding moral clarity.
To be clear, this phenomenon does exist, and it reaches absurd points when, for example, leftist influencers argue that abortions all the way up to the ninth month of pregnancy should have no base of authority – medical or legal – beyond the pregnant woman’s choice to terminate or not. Here, even as an ardent supporter of Planned Parenthood, one can acknowledge that at the final month of gestation, there should be rules determined by doctors around viability in place regarding the conditions for terminating that late of a pregnancy.
It’s important to note, then, that wokeness is more of an epiphenomenon of social media and brand creation instead of a driving force that undergirds the 21st century Left, as Maher wants his viewers to believe.
The pink tide movement in Latin America, for example, has seen an ascendance of economic populist left leaders like Lula da Silva in Brazil and Evo Morales in Bolivia who haven’t a single lick of woke rhetoric behind them. Yet, these leaders have been responsible for the uplifting of millions out of poverty in this century alone as well as the expansion of civil rights to the neediest in society.
This is why scab shaming, even when done by effete liberals who dwell on Twitter all day, is not wokeness. Wokeness doesn’t care about material circumstances at the end of the day. Scab shaming is about what happens to the material security of striking workers when their employers and scabbers decide to continue production without them. Scabbing is a direct attack on their security and ability to negotiate a deal with their employer which allows them to survive and continue to do work.
Therefore, scab shaming is not only effective but also necessary.
