Yikes! I mean, I do find Chapo moderately funny while not sharing their analysis on plenty of things - I think woke liberals are abusing the plight of oppressed groups, sure, but the answer isn't to ignore this but to actually combat it - but really, Chapo is enough for me from that weird subsection of the online left.
I remember it because some time before I listened to that somebody said that they were afraid the chapo people would throw minorities under the bus for clout or something.
Sort of. It feels like an act a lot of the time, just saying contrarian things because it gets attention. They concentrate on weird things too, like how much they hate fat women--one of them even has a twitter for larping as an anorexic, but I can't tell what the point is. I guess they just think it's fun.
Also, to be honest, my IRL friends and me are 'dirtbag leftists' if you'd just listen to us insulting our frenemies, but never cruel, never insulting people for disabilities, gender, or whatever, and we *do* care to be anti-racist, feminist, and all the other standard stuff people aspire to be. I just don't get why you can have mean lefties without the cruelty online.
Tbh i dont care that much what people say to each other in private, as long as you arent a celebrity who is defending calling all your friends the n-word. You know your friends and they know you, you all know where the interpersonal boundaries are.
People just should be careful that the 'in private' thing doesnt become an 'larger ingroup' thing where suddenly it is your whole extended circle is like that. That is how 'im sorry this was a private convo' changes into 'this is just what our group does, deal with it or gtfo'. As the latter can clearly become toxic fast (or, actually already is).
Christ, man, under Stalin this would have been quicker and more pleasant. Really, a hidden secret police uniform? Just kill me now and spare me the sight!
https://i.imgur.com/3Jbk9WC.jpeg
The Tito thing resonates with me because I was living in Former Yugoslavia until recently, and a lot of people don’t give a shit. When I was in Kosovo even then, when I was very careful to make it clear that even as a communist I wasn’t pro-Tito, people would just brush off my apologies for it because you know - they *like* me, and they get where I’m coming from. Even though I’m an awful rich Westerner with a penchant for Serbian literature if I don’t act like an arsehole - or even if I do but do it with a degree of understanding - Albanians, being as smart as anybody else, get it.
If anything they get it more than a lot of other people because they grew up with those jokes, which is one reason I felt so comfortable there and intend to return as soon as possible.
Very cool!
I miss the Balkans so much...
Can’t wait to go back when/if things clear up
I’ve had a few long conversations over the phone with friends there that led in exactly this direction
But it isn’t really the same
I think you spent more time there than me, but yeah it's such a great place.
My brother, when travelling together, once asked our driver in Bosnia whether he's Bosniak or Croatian and the dude went into a full on 10 minute rant about how stupid the question is. Pretty much the energy anyone young I know who grew up there has.
I was there for three months last year, although I wasn’t in Bosnia and Herzegovina
To be honest though, the fact you can distinguish between “Bosnia”, “Bosniak”, and “Croatian” so effortlessly would have people swooning at you, at least in my experience
I mentioned before on here - I think? - that over dinner I had a friend in Kosovo mention how impressed she was that I knew this shit as a Brit and I was like: what? This is fucking world history we’re talking about!
Hahaha right, tho the Croat-Bosniak distinction is religion based, and as said young people may identify with the whole state or even Yugoslavia, and dislike you knowing such meaningless and violent distinctions
I wouldn’t say exactly religion-based, although that’s in there to a BIG degree, it’s more in my experience a matter of historical grievance that finds its expression in religion
I guess it's a sensitive topic, I'm having my sympathies with my younger friends on the Balkans who argue it's all essentially along religious lines, but you're ofc right, it's a region where the ground is not just thick with history, the ground *is* history.
On the other hand, our driver would have been easily 'categorizable' by identifying which part of town his family's house is in, because a river splits it between Catholic and Muslim parts.
(Which, interestingly, is very familiar to me: The small town I grew up in Switzerland used to be split along Protestant-Catholic lines up until the 60ies, and you can ofc find similar things in Northern Ireland).
I grew up in South London with a full knowledge of what went on here about racial issues. But I also grew up with a step-dad from Belfast, and went the first time to university there. And after a teenagehood reading books about Balkans that happened to by on my (biological) dad’s shelves as I’ve mentioned before I felt a sort of kinship with Albanians that I don’t feel with the people I grew up with.
When I lived in Scotland it was the same. I identify very closely with this or that group of people with a divided identity, because I’ve always felt unlike people I was even close friends with who have a settled version of what they are. Those people have a particular vision of their own history which I simply don’t have.
I’m of a mixed ancestry which, in spite of only being traceable to what is now the UK, made me a mongrel. And I’m ok with that, but it also made me reflect *hard* on ethnic diversity and the things that people who *aren’t* so settled think they know things about. I suppose I’m just re-iterating the point that I feel an existential affinity with my friends in Kosovo and elsewhere in Balkans that I don’t get from elsewhere in Europe.
Hmm yeah, that story sounds familiar. I only have one grandparent from the country I grew up in, the rests being immigratns, and our family history is one of assimilation, low-key trying to be a 'good immigrant', but also struggling with and fighting against preconceived concepts of who counts as Swiss, through time identifying with one of the other nations we hail from - you know, my dad has fond memories of being the *only* supporter of the German team in World cups for because it was punk, just for the sake of it. At the same time, it's weird becuase my generation gets unambiguously read as 'from here' (the Swiss last name helps a ton), and the stories of discrimination are our grandparents - so we are weirdly in-between in the immmigration story.
The culmination of it is that none of my immediate family feels especially Swiss, and our family history might end up with one of my parents getting citizenship from my grandparent's country, which then enables me and my siblings to also get it (I think?). I might also as a joke learn some Hungarian becuase I have a drop of Hungarian blood in me, which coupled with basic language skills, is enough to net me a Hungarian passport under the new Hungarian nationality law.
I guess that goes to say, yeah, all those struggles with identity are of interest to me too.
By the way, how's your German? THere's an amazing podcast you'd enjoy: https://ballaballa-balkan.de/ (the hosts recommend to just jump in to whatever topic interests you, cause the first episode is shit lmao). The hosts are second generation immigrants from the Balkans (Croatia and Serbia or Republic Srpska IIRC), and have the typical lefty cynical view of it all, Tito jokes included.
Edit: I guess I also feel some weird kinship to the attitude of many of my friends on the Balkans about, you know, the lost future of communism, the good ol' days where people just lived together irregardless of ethnicity (ofc it wasn't so simple, but a lot better than now), while also being totally fucked by the current system. The hauntology is strong, when you are in Zagreb, in a shittily built new hotel, and walk to the incredibly well-built, brutalist, wonderful faculty building. like seriously: The window in the Westin five star hotel, built in like 2005, wouldn't close all the way (awesome in winter), while all the old stuff still stands strong, efficient and nice. The ground is permeated with haunting memories, which makes it all so much more interesting. Other places are like some in Germany for me, only much more recent - the Sarajevo Roses, the stories, the closeness of it all.
NB: I’m afraid my German - as with all languages other than English^1 - is unusually bad, so I’ll probably skip the podcast.
As for Zagreb, I’ve never visited Croatia so I can’t speak to it myself, but the story reminds me of my first day in Beograd/Belgrade. Driving/walking past incredible buildings that had been there forever over broken pavements that had been clearly filled in badly only a year ago. Of course in the case of Belgrade - which is an incredible, vibrant place, even if you’re the shallowest most ignorant tourist, or if you just hate Serbs - the most striking moments on that first day were the bombed out buildings that are still bombed out from the 1999 Kosovo War - it was very much like the first time I encountered the “peace walls” that are still there in Belfast or the massive fence in Derry which exists to protect the Orange Lodge on the hill from grenades thrown/fired from the bottom, a Catholic area known as “Bogside”.
Like you say: hauntology.
And incidentally, probably my favourite song by The Fall is “Free Range”, which is an impressionistic account of (now) Former Yugoslavia in the 90s when they were touring there shortly before the break-up. Mark E. Smith, whose band it essentially was, is on record saying something like how you could just feel that shit was gonna go down, “precog” (a borrowing from Philip K. Dick) as he calls it. [It opens with a sample saying “Zagreb, Day 5” and goes on from there](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dPEyswZ1cCI)
My own personal ancestry is relatively tame. My mum was born in Glasgow in a lower-middle-class family, moved to Leeds, got into Cambridge and eventually moved to South London. My dad was born in Essex in a middle-class family with a Scottish mother (who died before I was born: my dad has always told me would have got on like a house on fire, very similar personalities) and a very stiff upper lip English father.
But (hauntology again) there was always a feeling of displacement anyway. I’m the eldest of three children (one ‘full’ brother, one ‘half brother’, although I don’t care for the distinction), not to mention two “unofficial” so-to-speak step-brothers. We moved houses quite frequently when I was a kid due to various personal circumstances with my parents - they divorced when I was four years old - even when those parents eventually became well-off.
And this was a really unconventional upbringing amongst my childhood peers, who mostly had stable lifestyles growing up in one house forever with two married parents until they moved out.
My step-dad, who is haunted (that word again) by growing up in Belfast during The Troubles (gotta love that sarcastic euphemism) very early on had to have it explained to me that he wakes in fright at the sound of a helicopter, indeed he a few times vividly described in quite poetic language the horror of that memory. His father, who worked as a photographer for the police, therefore had to check under his car for bombs every morning before driving to work. So yeah, I can identify with Albanians especially in Kosovo at least at second hand.
I was walking down the street one night in Pristina with my friend, the Kosovar girlfriend of my then flatmate from Canada. We often didn’t get the chance to talk this freely because they’re a couple, but we agreed about the concept of “getting it”, in an existential sort of way, which he just couldn’t do: all he wanted to do was go walking in the woods and have fun. And another friend I got drunk with told me how impressed she was with the fact I was interested in and capable of noting all these things.
That isn’t a boast, it’s just that these things reveal themselves to you once you have a background you can analogise to which makes them clearer.
1. I was permitted to do Latin instead of a modern language in secondary school because that was the only one I could even rise to a C in.
Nice song link!
My experience with Kosovo is a second hand one, of growing up in a country which took in tends of thousands of Kosovarian refugees, and at various stages of my life had friends who fled from the war, or whose families came here before. A girl breaking down in second grade because, IIRC our teacher said something about the war in the Balkans. A friend, much later, when watching a movie about a war - I can't even remember which one - breaking down afterwards because it reminds her of the plight of her family. All the positive stuff, too: The, I guess, most successful guy from my high school class didn't speak our local language until he was 12 or so (I *think* he and his family came as a refugee in 1999?) and he now is a licenced lawyer, largely serving as the attorney of choice for the Kosovarian exilees here, happily married to a girl he met while visiting friends in Kovoso and with some very cute children (not quite sure how many, we lost touch).
I had that conversation with my friend over dinner. Incredibly bleak observations that she woke up every day thinking she was going to die. I always thought the best part was how straightforward she was about how traumatising it was.
When I visited Gjacova my friend Ardian, who hosted me there, showed us around and casually mentioned that the beautiful mosque he’d taken us to was rebuilt after being hit by a missile during the war, while he was living in the town. People tell you stories that seem totally normal to them, have breakdowns, fuck around out of trauma.
I like when that happens because I can appreciate it.
yeah pretty much saw that in Sarajevo. Beautiful town, but you see the scares everywhere, and the locals aren't shy about talking about it. Ofc, it's all tied up in the conflicts - the best thing, for me, is the Sarajevo town hall, which the Austrians built in the 'Moorish style', and was later used as a library. It's very beautiful - https://media-cdn.tripadvisor.com/media/photo-s/14/23/ae/63/sarajevo-city-hall-known.jpg - but it's essentially the attempt of a colonizing power to gain favors from the Muslim locals with a governance seat built 'in their style'. Well, ofc, that's not the Bosniak building style at all, so it says much more about the Austrohungarians than the Bosniaks. Oh, and here's a picture of Franz Ferdinand between the first and second assasination attempt right in front of it: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a5/Minutos_previos_al_atentado_en_Sarajevo.jpg
Anyway. The whole thing was bombed out in the shelling of Sarajevo. The whole thing was rebuilt again (ironically with Austrian money) and turned into a museum. A museum, I should add, that is telling the story of how evil the Serbians were. Me,my brother and an ethnically Serbian friend got a free tour (yay?) and our serbian friend felt rather uncomfortable, to say the least. *Weird times*.
You have to listen to yourself. The “leftist” consensus is sanctimonious and inveterately moralizing. To have to *care* to be anti-racist, feminist, blah blah blah is indicative of a failed bourgeois political project. All this focus on correct language and behavior is a result of the online being our public sphere.
> To have to care to be anti-racist, feminist, blah blah blah is indicative of a failed bourgeois political project
Dude, no, just no? Like, first of all, that shit existed before the internet, and second, what is a Left worth that is not for everyone?
The fact that I'm suggesting a counterproject to liberal and neoliberal abuse of identities, and your first reaction is "this is bourgeois" tells me you're either 19 and edgy or too online. From someone who's been in the left for, uff, 13 years? quite actively, just go away plz, and read a book.
I don’t know what your counterproject is. Please enlighten me.
I’m just saying that the left can do without the bourgeois virtue signaling and still be inclusive. A lot of the left does the work for neoliberalism via incessant language policing
Care about equality for everyone. Improving the living and working conditions of everyone. Not just white dudes.
The fact that you somehow can't even tell sincere leftist policies from whatever you think bourgeois virtue signaling is anymore really confuses me. I could list now the real-life stuff I've been involved with along those lines, but hey, I bet you'll call that virtue signaling, right?
Oh, I know about the Nebenwiderspruch shit, I just don't care for it. Marx lived over a century ago, things change. But I also didn't really wanna say that this stuff can't be leftist, I'm just baffled that the other user cares enough to either know about what Marx said or parroting what they heard elsewhere. Sure Marx disagreed (and so did Mao, whom this all usually goes back to in the spelled out form) but you know, they got some shit wrong, didn't day? I didn't realize only those who 💯% accept Marx' word as dogma are allowed to call themselves Marxist.
And you can identify as a Marxist for many reasons, gatekeeping the Widersprüche wouldnt be a great entry test. Are we gonna say feminists can't be Marxist? That decolonializers can't be Marxists cause they prioritizes, well, anti-colonialism?
Shit, dude, we have Gramsci now, you know the dude with the whole hegemony concept, which is pretty neat and helpful.
> Care about equality for everyone. Improving the living and working conditions of everyone. Not just white dudes.
This is the same kind vague and bourgeois idealism that Marx ripped apart in his criticism of Proudhon and the other utopians 170 years ago.
If the RS podcast has any political utility at all, it's that their presence triggers the absolute worst leftoids that are fundamentally trapped in a liberal mindset and framing but present as 'leftist' for personal and professional branding purposes to reveal themselves without fail.
No, it’s not virtue signaling. If you’re out doing tenant organizing, mutual aid etc that’s great. I don’t think you’re virtue signaling when saying you’re being anti-racist, feminist etc, but the fact that the view is that everyone in this amorphous left needs to correct with language all of the time, needs to conform to certain standards, seems inherently bourgeois to me. There’s almost like a Victorian prudishness re: language on certain parts of the left. It seems to me these attitudes only buttress the capitalist/PMC class bc they can recuperate left language for their own ends, as we have seen.
My view on this is that we need to revive a real punk, anti-bourgeois attitude and try to consolidate a rebellious counter-culture again. I think we are getting there but we have allied with the liberals such that any left movements have been watered down (see abolition getting lumped in with neoliberal “defund the police” movement).
And yes, I view myself as trying to be anti-racist, an LBGTQ ally etc, but it’s how we talk about this stuff that matters when building a movement.
> the fact that the view is that everyone in this amorphous left needs to correct with language all of the time
Wow I sure am glad I never said anything like this.
> There’s almost like a Victorian prudishness re: language on certain parts of the left. It seems to me these attitudes only buttress the capitalist/PMC class bc they can recuperate left language for their own ends, as we have seen.
Then offer them a real alternative, a true emancipatory movement instead of a podcast where two hot ladies tell you why the problems of groups you aren't a part of don't matter. Maybe that would be a good start, wouldn't it? Becuase otherwise you're just one more dense potato who spends their online life being mean and cruel to other leftists and feels oh so edgy.
I don’t even listen to the pod anymore lol but the sub is genuinely funny. A lot of the posts shit on the hosts, most people I’ve talked to on their agree their politics are dumb. What redscarepod (the sub) offers is an online cultural space for experimentation (generally) without judgement. I wouldn’t say ppl on that sub are really mean or anything, they mostly keep to those confines.
I guess I just don’t really see much of an issue with that? Sure there may be some indiscretion on that sub but having a place where ppl can just be themselves is sorely needed in today’s world.
Successful mass movements require ideas to generate them first, and activism-brain which usually just stifles creativity doesn’t really get us there. Art has been stifled by PMC totalitarianism (lol) and gentrification, COL, the online etc etc so an irreverence is needed to combat that. We need culture to move us forward and if we are spending our time Balkanizing we won’t get there
> What redscarepod (the sub) offers is an online cultural space for experimentation (generally) without judgement. I wouldn’t say ppl on that sub are really mean or anything, they mostly keep to those confines.
So, it's TheMotte for socialists then.
Who the fuck cares about this shit. Honestly it’s arguably more bourgeois to have these endless “cultural critique” debates about whether or not policing your own language is this way or that way. You have the freedom to just fucking ignore it and get on with making a living, and it won’t matter either fucking way if you occasionally make a mis-step on somebody’s fucking podcast.
The whole red scare thing reeks of the worst, dullest, kind of privilege. People are out there dying in the streets and you want to complain about people - ultimately the same people as you - themselves complaining about the alleged misuse of terminology?
Go fuck yourself, or take yourself barely seriously, or ideally both.
Woah, some serious ressentiment here. This might as well be a copypasta
> Who the fuck cares about this shit. Honestly it’s arguably more bourgeois to have these endless “cultural critique” debates about whether or not policing your own language is this way or that way. You have the freedom to just fucking ignore it and get on with making a living, and it won’t matter either fucking way if you occasionally make a mis-step on somebody’s fucking podcast.
Then why does sneerclub have to spend its time digging for hits against internet rationalists, the silliest ideology known to man?
> The whole red scare thing reeks of the worst, dullest, kind of privilege. People are out there dying in the streets and you want to complain about people - ultimately the same people as you - themselves complaining about the alleged misuse of terminology?
Why don’t you go help the people “dying in the streets” instead of browsing Reddit?
> Go fuck yourself, or take yourself barely seriously, or ideally both.
Woof.
I literally go out and help the people dying in the streets, and have a standing donation to as far as I know the most effective nationwide homelessness charity in the UK, for several years now - I signed up to it when I was what, 22-23?
That doesn’t make me an organiser against oppression but I do my part with what I have insofar as I can, which sometimes isn’t a lot, sometimes is.
I browse reddit in part because I am literally legally mandated to stay indoors and there are a lot of times in the day when the pressures of [gestures at everything] and depression and anxiety means I frankly don’t feel like reading a book, even though I want to do so.
This isn’t ressentiment at all: that concept applies, if it applies to anything, what in English would be more or less just called “guilt” and the visceral reaction some feel to *having* guilt, and therefore the emotional rejection towards that guilt which ends up summarised as “ressentiment”
I don’t have that problem because I’m capable of taking class and associated concepts seriously, rather than repeating bullshit I heard on a shitty podcast by a coke-addled narcissist.
> Dude, no, just no? Like, first of all, that shit existed before the internet, and second, what is a Left worth that is not for everyone?
That's entirely the point. These may once have been movements that meant something, but now they're just performative simulacra; cultural signifiers that are packaged and sold back to you denuded of any meaningful radicalism they might once have been associated with.
It's perhaps reductive to blame that entirely on the internet, or to call this industrialised culture "bourgeois" when if anything it's associated with the dissolution of the coherent class structures of the industrial revolution. But in essence what he's saying is correct.
> These may once have been movements that meant something, but now they're just performative simulacra
Yes, we should abandon a universalist political project because it’s been co-opted by dickheads
I am very smart.
You realise that the performance of class struggle as over-and-above universalism is itself a performance, in this case in the mouths of - of all things - podcasters?
I think that's pretty ungenerous reading of what I said above. The point isn't that you should abandon a universalist politics, but that in a lot of ways, most people already have without realising it.
And of course that applies equally to the concept of class struggle (which, I feel compelled to add, has historically been understood to be a universalist project). In fact it was orthodox Marxist notions of class struggle that this basic line of criticism was originally articulated against by the likes of Adorno and Marcuse.
Of course the "dirtbag left" is both correct, and somewhat unoriginal in noting that most of what is popularly regarded as "politics" — even amongst putative radicals — is really just the economy of cultural commodification. But then it's equally true that recognising this trap isn't the same thing as escaping it, and so — as you'll occasionally catch the chapos admitting — they're not really "doing politics," they're just taking part in the very same culture industry they bemoan.
The main virtue of red scare, insofar as there is one, is that their response to the aestheticization of politics treats the prospect not as a political one that they obviously can't address, but as an aesthetic one that doesn't really matter anyway. Now granted, a lot of their treatments of those aesthetics are garbled regurgitations of questionably relevant 20th century critics, which is why the subreddit is just as inclined to mock the hosts as agree with them on any given issue. But the appeal is precisely the fact that it doesn't really matter what they think. In that sense I think most people on the sub, and perhaps even the girls themselves, would probably agree with your appraisal of the podcasting class.
I would first point out that your own reply was heavily ungenerous in the first place.
Of course there are people who abandoned that universalism, or never believed in it in the first place, who also happen to - in classic Clinton style - weaponise identity politics as a vehicle (maybe a technical) for political gain.
But what you said was that emphasising the same things as Hillary Clinton does - even if in a very different context - is equivalent to this aesthetic in action, rather than a genuine concern for e.g. the lives of trans people or whatever. What you said was that the movements which seek to protect minority groups, and I *quote*: “now they're **just** performative simulacra”. My emphasis.
——-
To be honest I don’t really understand why the appeal of cultural criticism should be it doesn’t matter what they think. That just sounds like a dull sort of fandom for people who don’t really think before they speak.
But I don’t listen to the podcast and people I respect do, I just think it’s lazy and shit.
The issue isn't so much that individual people abandon/reject radical politics; it's that within the structure of the late capitalist economy, most if not all attempts to formulate and propagate a mass political project will at some point be mediated by the mass culture industry, which can only commodify. In practice, political radicalism in the developed west therefore almost always ends up subsumed by the hegemonic superstructure, no matter how antagonistic to that order it understands itself to be.
Think about the the scale and intensity of the BLM movement over the summer — certainly unprecedented in my life time. What came of it? Some new trends in advertising and corporate PR, and a Joe Biden presidency that will deliver upon precisely none of what the protestors demanded, and never even promised otherwise. That wasn't because the people involved were disingenuous; the vast majority of the people I met were very earnest about what they were doing, and in many cases conceived of themselves as part of something quite radical. But the only way we could really act collectively was through the creation of a media spectacle that drove ratings and clicks, and provided a branding opportunity for corporate America. Any political impact the movement was allowed to have was purely incidental to the commercial value of its cultural output.
And this isn't exclusive to the left, either. The most insane, unhinged manifestation of the right in living memory *stormed the capitol* a week ago, and what did they do once they were inside? Take selfies and steal memorabilia to hawk online. What was the lasting political impact of this unprecedented act of political violence? Basically nothing. Because as dramatic as it was — not least in the minds of the people actually taking part in it — it was only ever a performative simulacrum of real political action. Now in that case, obviously that's for the best, but if you compare the scale of these two movements, it's pretty obvious which suffers the more for our collective reliance on the culture industry.
Well let me begin by pointing out that in spite of what was then a growing pandemic I was out in the streets last year with friends here in London (with a mask) because I thought that it was more important to protest racism than - as somebody unlikely to carry the virus - stay at home instead of standing in solidarity with BLM and all that.
So I don’t really see where your commentary on the culture industry, which is a thing, and does co-opt left-wing politics, leads anywhere other than a kind of nihilism which works against progress. Joe Biden sucks, and I wouldn’t have voted for him myself had I had an American passport, and as a fan of Guy Debord I am well aware of the critique of liberal compromise.
The commodification of politics has less to do with specifically American politics than internationalism. Indeed if your perspective is limited to critiques of people like Joe Biden being shitty and exploiting “woke” or whateverthefuck politics then you’re playing the same game those freaks are trying to play. What - at least in my experience - Red Scare and a bunch of other stuff does, (speaking from my outside experience as a Brit) is roll through politics and tell you to join the game but as a putative outsider.
I met a friend last year from Minneapolis who was in the protests there. Very intellectually serious, fascinatingly moral guy, who very cleverly made the made the point that all this cultural critique stuff is nonsense because the real spectacle is the ground-game that gets played out in the streets when you just shut shit down.
Point being: a podcast might have a few things to say, but you’re reifying frankly dickheads if you think it really matters.
I mean I’ll admit it’s not a very productive critique, but that doesn’t make it wrong. I think a lot of people — even cynics like myself — who were present at the protests were somewhat captivated by the spectacle we were participating in, but looking back on it now it’s hard to really say what, if anything came of it. The reality is that even if all the cultural criticism seems like irrelevant nonsense when you’re actually there, on the ground, experiencing something real — which I agree with your friend that it does — that experience is still limited to the relative handful of people there, and the only way to actually engage society at large in that movement is through the various apparatuses of the capitalist economy. The sentiments your trying to express and the alternative you’re trying to articulate don’t become real to anyone else until they can be sold the versions of them that have been algorithmically determined and focus grouped to appeal to them specifically. The actual material economy is so alien to us — and we’re so alienated from one another by our positions within it — that our only engagement with wider political realities is through these cultural products. We have no ability to actually shut shit down because the political economy is so globalized and corporatized, so efficient and yet labyrinthine, that it’s basically beyond your ability to impact — or even really understand — without recourse to larger institutions and structures that can’t help but reduce any criticism to a cultural product e.g. putatively Marxist podcasts.
To that end, as far as podcasts go, I obviously agree that they don’t matter, and that it’s stupid to reify them. I suspect most people on the red scare podcast subreddit, and indeed, probably the hosts themselves would also agree. That’s not really the point of something like red scare. The point is that if all we can do to engage with the world is consume culture that doesn’t “matter” (at least in any political sense), we might as well have a little stupid fun with the culture. Perhaps that’s a bit nihilistic, but like I said, that doesn’t make it wrong; and of course it doesn’t necessarily prevent you from trying, in whatever small and/or probably hopeless way, to make the world slightly less shit.
The problem isn't the idea of "hav\[ing\] a little stupid fun with the culture"; you know that, right? Casting people who don't like, for example, racist and ableist slurs as implicitly anti-fun is manipulative.
I'm not really sure what you're trying to get at. It's a matter of observable fact that people have fun saying inappropriate, offensive things; I don't think it's too controversial to suggest that they find this fun because it cuts against the hegemonic culture, and I think most people would likewise agree that it's generally pretty stupid. So yeah, saying slurs in this context absolutely is "having stupid fun with the culture" — though I should add that for the most part this is a pretty reductive characterisation of what I actually meant by that.
If you object to the people saying the things you regard as inappropriate and offensive, that's fine, I obviously completely understand. But the fact that people like you object so strenuously is exactly why people like that find their transgression so entertaining in the first place. There will always be cultural norms that the majority of people abide by, and there will likewise always be people who, in certain situations, find it funny to violate those norms. Most people will probably find themselves on both sides of this divide at different points throughout their lives. It's really to worth losing sleep over.
IDK man, I'm not in the US, but I'm an active member on the board of the largest party in my city and we do fight for all those causes, so call me bourgeois for taking part in the system, but it's both effective and helps people.
Yeah I mean on a small scale it's obviously worthwhile to do what we can to make individual people's lives better. The problem is that the kind of mass political projects that are historically necessary to force more systemic change are difficult to organise in a social reality mediated by capital at seemingly every turn. But that obviously shouldn't stop people from like, volunteering at a homeless shelter or giving money to a bail fund or whatever.
Unironically, if that's your analysis, become a social democrat and fight for the evolution of our system towards a more humane, caring, empathetic one, a system wehre no-one has to be afraid of losing their hosue, their job, getting sick or injured.
I mean in practice I basically am — it seems like that's basically all anyone can be in the developed west these days — but that doesn't mean I have to be satisfied with these meagre political horizons, especially when the movements behind them — Bernie, Corbyn, Syriza, etc. — keep spectacularly eating shit.
> To have to *care* to be anti-racist, feminist, blah blah blah is indicative of a failed bourgeois political project.
Then I guess I don't understand what you are saying. What makes caring about racism, sexism, etc. more onerous than caring about capitalism?
e: oh are you saying that mainstream leftists (quite the oxymoron) say that you need to be super caring/empathetic/etc to be anti-X enough to be a good person? I dunno, maybe the finest of the twitterati do that. I don't think it takes a lot of effort to generally be decent.
I fucking love how dirtbags like you never think that there are comrades who could be wooed by refraining from uttering slurs. No, it's not all performative. Some of us genuinely care about creating an inclusive movement, and moderating one's language to be welcoming is a necessity.
(And what I say is true regardless of what I do, but I suspect a lot of dirtbags are motivated by wanking off to the aesthetic of someone who gets shit done, instead of thinking about how organizing works, so--I do mutual aid and tried to organize the other tenants under my landlord this summer.)
I’m not a dirtbag that’s such a dumb label. I don’t even use “slurs” and I’m not defending people who do. But your politics of moral purity suck and trying to police culture from the viewpoint of an organizer is ridiculous. Organizing != art, and the conflation of the two waters down culture.
I found your other point interesting:
"To have to *care* to be anti-racist, feminist, blah blah blah is indicative of a failed bourgeois political project. "
Assuming we live in cultures where all kinds of destructive behaviour towards other is the norm, you *have* to engage in some form of mental effort to avoid such.
And while I also dislike excessive language policing, I feel like there is little wrong in watching ones own actions and words with, yes, *care.*
After all, there is very little to be lost.
Also, "indicative of a failed bourgeois political project" is nothing anyone should be able to say without being sucked down the ivory tower into an irony black hole.
Red Scare started as a cutting critique of the neoliberal flattening out of culture, particularly as it pertains to the "girl boss" brand of modern feminism. It's definitely mean, in the way you and your friends would poach any low hanging fruit in a private conversation. Unfortunately, as their schtick relies on edgy takes without a concrete cultural goal, they have nowhere to go but right.
Chapo has solid political criticism but their cultural criticism is mostly too esoteric to be enjoyable. I've never understood the accusations of being racist. They're pro-BLM, anti-US intervention in the Middle East, and support indigenous rights. Granted I haven't heard every episode but I've always considered the mean smears as bad faith attacks to dismiss legitimate criticism of US institutions.
A lot of people in that sub don’t even listen to the pod. Plenty of people are critical of Anna and Dasha and hardly take their words to heart. The pod is entertainment and doesn’t aim for any political project besides satirizing neoliberalism.
It’s quite an ideologically diverse crowd, actually, but it’s centered around a rejection of neoliberal hegemony, I would say.
> it rejects neoliberal hegemony
Yeah, just like stupidpol, it rejects the oh so terrorizing neoliberal hegemony that slaps you on the wrist for using the r-word. You fight that battle, comrade!
Following that link led me to find this Yud comment:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/x8Fp9NMgDWbuMpizA/rationality-lessons-learned-from-irrational-adventures-in?commentId=CwrzhCR235haCeM6r
Suave. Why anyone would take this man's advice on *anything* is beyond me.
>If your true and actual reason for breaking up with someone is that her breasts are too small...
Cool and normal premise. Definitely a common relationship scenario for well adjusted individuals over the age of 15.
Benzo/beta-blocker addled maybe. The socdem Sailor Moon video was kind of funny, but the podcast is insufferable and extremely boring. Might put you to sleep if it weren't so irritating. A fan or radio static is better.
It's certainly true of the Chapo and Cum Town people, and those folks are all really adjacent, so i would at the very least not be surprised.
(Also it's pretty clear that they have eating disorders, and that is often comorbid with stimulant abuse as well.)
Cocaine is the best indicator that a socialist is not a socialist for the only reason that matters to me: empathy. Any parson who uses a drug that, 100% of the time, directly funds human misery and violence necessarily lacks empathy.
> Your Honor, years ago I recognized my kinship with all living beings, and I made up my mind that I was not one bit better than the meanest on earth. I said then, and I say now, that while there is a lower class, I am in it, and while there is a criminal element, I am of it, and while there is a soul in prison, I am not free.
-Some guy who wasn't a socialist apparently
The “materialism vs idealism” dichotomy is not amongst the most basic premises of socialism, it’s a premise of Marx, who along with other Marxists represents one strain of socialism
If you think socialism or indeed class struggle are entirely subsumed by Marxism you haven’t done the reading
I mean I'd argue that materialism is by no means exclusive to Marx, and is in a basic sense somewhat inherent to most non-marxist formulations of socialism as well. But either way, Marxism is obviously a particular significant formulation of socialism, and he's right that most Marxists would regard the above concern for "empathy" as idealist nonsense, so the OPs argument that a socialist who lacks empathy can't be a real socialist is, on it's face, pretty absurd.
Sorry, I was just talking about the only socialism that has actually existed in the world beyond single colony experiments and anarchist autonomous zones in the woods.
I live - not exclusively - in the UK, where I grew up. Throughout the 20th century trade unions here considered themselves socialist, and often Marxist. However, they far from always considered themselves Marxist, and there were a variety of schisms within the socialist movement, a movement which had a bunch of victories, over whether socialism should follow a Marxist path.
You sound young.
Am I back-pedalling for the sanctity of Kropotkin and Proudhon? Or am I stating fairly well known facts about socialism in the 20th century? Or is it just that you don’t know about socialism beyond the big names from 2nd year political theory?
I don't know what's so difficult or ideologically blinding about me saying that empathy, to me, is the most important basis for arriving at socialism -- i.e. wanting a better world for everyone. It's pretty simple. Reject my opinion or don't, I don't care.
The larger point for me is that people who use cocaine are doing harm. Which means they don't want a better world for other people. I don't want allies who don't want a better world for others. And I fully expect to be downvoted wherever I say this on Reddit. I just feel it's important for me to register it out loud.
You know what, you're right. The moral question here is *hard*. And we should always just give up on hard questions and never try to answer them. It's just too much work. I concede.
No, the moral question is easy - of course it's unethical, it's consumption under capitalism. It's not clear to me that cocaine consumption is less ethical than oil consumption, for example. It's also not clear to me that it's ethically superior to eating at large fast food chains, or buying Nestle products.
Buying products that are funded by murder and torture is worse than buying products funded by worker exploitation. It's also all the more worse that cocaine is *only* funding and funded by murder and torture.
It's "ideologically blinding" because it directly countervails materialism, the foundational philosophy of socialism. I don't love comparing politics to religion, but this strikes me as analogous to saying "I'm a Christian, but I don't believe Jesus died for the sins of mankind." You can believe what you want, but why call yourself a Christian if you don't believe Jesus is your savior? I'm not saying you can't believe in an empathy-based politics and I'm not saying an empathy-based politics is bad (although, as a socialist, I reject it.) I'm just saying empathy isn't the basis of socialism and it never has been.
Okay... you can be a pre-1830s French-style utopian socialist if you really want, but I gotta tell you I've never met anyone like that involved in serious organizing. You might consider that the movement has gone past that and that you ought not to ignore the massive contributions Marx made to our understanding of socialism even if you don't organize explicitly as a Marxist.
if you really think marxist socialism is the only socialism you could encounter in contemporary organizing, you haven't done much contemporary organizing.
"Any and every form of even slightly non-Marxist socialism" is a big leap from "pre-1830s French-style utopian socialism" but if you want to go there, yes, I'll admit that as an organizer I encounter many liberals. 😛
I took your comment to imply that "pre-1830s French-style utopian socialism" was the only alternative to Marxist socialism - was I mistaken? Do you think everyone is either a Marxist or a liberal? Have you never met a Catholic Worker? An anarchist? A non-Marxist Democratic Socialist a la Martin Luther King? An Islamic Socialist? I have happily worked with all of these types, as well as many different types of Marxists. I hope you have the pleasure to do the same soon.
Of course it isn't, but most modern strains of anarchism, democratic-socialism, etc. still acknowledge materialism. Marx is a lot more than materialism, you can accept it while not agreeing with his other conclusions about the state etc. There is no modern movement of socialist politics built on "empathy." MLK and religious socialists are not necessarily fully materialist, but even they tend to base their doctrines on universal, divine love or the higher law of the Kingdom of God, not the empathy of individual humans. "I will be a nice person and that's my politics" is liberal idealism even if all those other strains are not.
>Of course it isn't, but most modern strains of anarchism, democratic-socialism, etc. still acknowledge materialism.
Not "most", at least not in the strict, Marxist sense of the term. And you're moving the goalposts awfully far from your initial claim that materialism was the "foundational philosophy" of socialism, as essential as accepting Christ is to Christianity.
>"I will be a nice person and that's my politics" is liberal idealism even if all those other strains are not.
That's a pretty unfair characterization of the idea of viewing empathy as a central motivation for one's belief in socialism. The person you replied to said they believed in socialism because they "want[ed] a better world for everyone" and you responded as if that was antithetical to socialism. But I can think of many important socialists and socialist movements across many places and times that share that philosophy, in their own ways.
It really should not be surprising that the 'true leftists' that clutch their pearls the hardest over the dirtbag sphere inevitably end up being people that haven't read Marx or understood why a rejection of bourgeois morality is fundamental to the ideology.
Yes the Bernie people have also coopted "Marxist" aesthetics without understanding it as well. That doesn't contradict what I said in the slightest though.
The Bernie people did not co-opt "Marxist" aesthetics - they're just liberals and so are all the "dirtbags". Are any of these rich podcasters in a communist party? Have they ever read Mao? If not they're wasting everyone's time with their brainless podcast ramblings.
No one in the redscare subreddit would call petit bouge podcasters principled Marxists.
>rich being a description of class character instead of relation to MoP
>Have they ever read Mao?
Ah I see I'm dealing with a different stripe of leftoid LARPer. Carry on.
If you think people who make bank off rambling their most pea-brained takes on a podcast are ever going to join the proletariat you have been absolutely swindled. They're rich and the only class character they represent is Settler Amerikkkan Labor Aristocracy (at best).
Recoiling at the mention of Mao like a scared little child shows me that *you're* the one who clings to bourgeois morality. Go clutch your pearls you running dog.
> If you think people who make bank off rambling their most pea-brained takes on a podcast are ever going to join the proletariat you have been absolutely swindled
I explicitly said they're not not you dunce- what do you think "petty bouge" means?
>the only class character they represent is Settler Amerikkkan Labor Aristocracy (at best).
>Recoiling at the mention of Mao like a scared little child shows me that you're the one who clings to bourgeois morality. Go clutch your pearls you running dog.
Absolute parody of leftoid aesthetic and not surprised this vein of radlib ML thought can be synthesized in this community of Anarcho-liberals.
You should probably put down Sakai and actually read Marx if you're going to include him in your handle and LARP though.
Your misunderstanding of basic distinctions between terms like proletarian, petit bourgeois, bourgeois gives up the game.
>I explicitly said they're not not you dunce- what do you think "petty bouge" means?
Like I said, the "dirtbag sphere" is entirely liberals. I'm not really sure why you would bother to defend these failures who just spent years stanning for Bernie. You are talking complete nonsense about how the Bernie supporters coopted "Marxist" aesthetics. There was never any attempt to do this; Bernie and his movement of pea-brained Americans was liberal from day one and only used liberal aesthetics. None of the "dirtbag left" have any idea what they're talking about, which is why they have no analysis of labour aristocracy and imperialism. Keep trying to find "the proletariat" in labor aristocratic and petit bourgeois spaces - maybe after a decade or two you'll realise you were barking up the wrong tree.
It seems that you're getting mad at the actual principled Marxists (the MLs). I don't see why you would recoil so much at names like Mao and Sakai unless you were a liberal adhering to bourgeois morality.
>It really should not be surprising that the 'true leftists' that clutch their pearls the hardest over the dirtbag sphere
Remember that the true leftists (the Marxist-Leninists and Maoists) saw through the "dirtbag sphere" as the intellectual frauds they are from day one.
I don’t understand how redscare fans can try so hard to be edgy and
irreverent while still failing. It’s really weird when fans of a podcast
will try to talk like the hosts of that podcast (chapo fans are really
guilty of this too) and just come as sounding strangely anodyne.
Who are they trying to impress? Dasha and Anna definitely don’t care
and I can’t imagine it feels good to participate in such an unoriginal
circlejerk.
> when fans of a podcast will try to talk like the hosts of that podcast
This could be mirroring, which is an unconscious thing that commonly happens when socializing in small-ish groups.
Yeah its people who think that saying "retard" more often and LARPing a few of the American patriotic trappings will somehow lead to tepid Bernie-style socdem politics becoming ascendant. It's found only among a very small incestuous twitter grouping and a couple subreddits so far. I think the podcasters themselves are couple of vacuous New York media types? (as usual)
I have no idea what red scare is, but the linked post in the comment
is some good vintage sneer material. I remember following lukeprog’s
atheism blog (because I was an edgy atheist which spend too much time
discussing religion online), and then he started blogging about Eliezer
stuff and that was how I discovered LessWrong.
So I broke up with Alice over a long conversation that included an
hour-long primer on evolutionary psychology in which I explained how
natural selection had built me to be attracted to certain features that
she lacked
This is of the top sneer-worthy quotes from the rationalist crowd. We
totally should make a contest to vote for the worst one
> So I broke up with Alice over a long conversation that included an hour-long primer on evolutionary psychology in which I explained how natural selection had built me to be attracted to certain features that she lacked
WTF
If there's a contest, I can't imagine anything beating this.
Lecturing Alice, my wife of 15 years on how [boobs are merely ersatz arses](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5qLYAFdddPw) and gently informing her that there will be a test at the end of semester 😎😎😎
This raises more questions than it answers! Is neoreaction driving the ideology of the weirder parts of anime, is it the other way around or are they both part of some sort of complicated self-reinforcing ecosystem of strange beliefs? I'm learning so much.
Posting because I stumbled upon this via the post where SSC readers
try to find the Pareto optimal response to the sudden paradigm change
that will occur in the world now that SSC is at the top of substack.
Reading this post was an emotional rollercoaster on the political
compass. The use of the purjorative lib in the first paragraph
made me at first think they were rightists but then their Sneer of The
Motte made me realize they’re Slavoj Zizek reincarnates.
> Pareto optimal response to the sudden paradigm change that will occur in the world now that SSC is at the top of substack
So many words that should not be in the same sentence as SSC.
[Link to prove I haven’t lost my mind](https://reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/l3ngpy/planning_for_the_event_that_sscacx_gets_much_more/) (yet).
Also I love your flair.
I’m a member of the community and it’s full of a lot of incredibly
kind, smart, and curious people. I’m an autistic, gay, non-binary
anarchist and gender abolitionist and it’s a community I’m proud to call
myself apart of. Eyemode and the other people at sneerclub tend to be an
extraordinarily toxic bunch who enjoy (as the name implies) obsessing
over a group of people doing and talking about things they enjoy and
sneering at them as if they’re above it all.
At this point I kind of consider people saying a community is “kind”
to be a massive red flag. I’ve been listening to My
Year in Mensa, a podcast about a woman who joins Mensa to see what
it’s like, and they constantly gaslight her by telling her a fascist
Mensa Facebook group is full of “kind” people. You only have to insist
that if there is something horribly wrong IMHO.
That series is great, Jamie Loftus series [on Lolita](https://open.spotify.com/show/4dvc06zTAaAylzdTrsgKzp) was also good (at least the few episodes I have listened so far).
Maybe. But they flock to whomever makes "anti-wokeism" part of their MO. Check related subreddits for stupidpol. Chapo, RedScare and CumTown will pop up.
Plenty numbers have wikipedia articles, that doesn't mean they are real!
(oh wow I just realized this joke works both in philosophy of math AND math! Go me!)
The “greatest hit” linked to in that comment had my eyebrows climbing
up above my hairline.
So I broke up with Alice over a long conversation that included an
hour-long primer on evolutionary psychology in which I explained how
natural selection had built me to be attracted to certain features that
she lacked
“Leftists” who have been brain corrupted by the idea that there is
“idpol” and deciding that the left should be about being nice to
reactionaries and not helping people, actually
Neolibs who promote individual rich black women on timeline as ideal
politics while huge swathes of the population including an outsized
portion of black women are forced to live in roach-infested hovels
unable to escape or protect themselves
I only recently discovered this whole stupidpol/redscare/“post
left”-sphere. Thankfully unlike some people on the right, these people
lack the courage to back up their ideas and actually try to kill people
like me. This whole circlejerk of an ideology is what happens when your
politics are insulated from any concrete consequences to yourself.
In what specifically o thought leader?
Because in a brief look at the red scare dudes they seem kinda sneer worthy in their own right. Like a less well read version of MarxBro.
Don't get me wrong, they are plenty sneer-worthy (though not an on-topic target for this sub). But so is pablum like "socialism is about empathy :D" or getting into more-leftist-than-thou dick-measuring contests.
Edit: also the facile "if you say 'bourgeois' you must be bougie yourself lol" thing.
In dutch (we prob stole it from the french) a bougie is a sparkplug.
Which makes these convos always a bit funny.
'You use big words so you are a sparkplug!'
Can I ask a red scare pod question here? I don’t know where else to ask.
Red scare pod is just Chapo without the leftism and somehow even more cruel, right?
OP Look what you did to sneerclub, you led the red scares here!
Following that link led me to find this Yud comment: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/x8Fp9NMgDWbuMpizA/rationality-lessons-learned-from-irrational-adventures-in?commentId=CwrzhCR235haCeM6r
[deleted]
I don’t understand how redscare fans can try so hard to be edgy and irreverent while still failing. It’s really weird when fans of a podcast will try to talk like the hosts of that podcast (chapo fans are really guilty of this too) and just come as sounding strangely anodyne.
Who are they trying to impress? Dasha and Anna definitely don’t care and I can’t imagine it feels good to participate in such an unoriginal circlejerk.
red scare folks please link this post so you can sneer so we can do a meta-meta-sneer. I’ll start:
is this a stupidpol pod? Never heard of it
I have no idea what red scare is, but the linked post in the comment is some good vintage sneer material. I remember following lukeprog’s atheism blog (because I was an edgy atheist which spend too much time discussing religion online), and then he started blogging about Eliezer stuff and that was how I discovered LessWrong.
This is of the top sneer-worthy quotes from the rationalist crowd. We totally should make a contest to vote for the worst one
Posting because I stumbled upon this via the post where SSC readers try to find the Pareto optimal response to the sudden paradigm change that will occur in the world now that SSC is at the top of substack.
Reading this post was an emotional rollercoaster on the political compass. The use of the purjorative lib in the first paragraph made me at first think they were rightists but then their Sneer of The Motte made me realize they’re Slavoj Zizek reincarnates.
Enjoy nonetheless!
At this point I kind of consider people saying a community is “kind” to be a massive red flag. I’ve been listening to My Year in Mensa, a podcast about a woman who joins Mensa to see what it’s like, and they constantly gaslight her by telling her a fascist Mensa Facebook group is full of “kind” people. You only have to insist that if there is something horribly wrong IMHO.
Eugh redscare.
Eugh, homophobia, ableism and hating on polypeople.
The “greatest hit” linked to in that comment had my eyebrows climbing up above my hairline.
They’re the same picture.
>red scare
gross
I only recently discovered this whole stupidpol/redscare/“post left”-sphere. Thankfully unlike some people on the right, these people lack the courage to back up their ideas and actually try to kill people like me. This whole circlejerk of an ideology is what happens when your politics are insulated from any concrete consequences to yourself.
We don’t typically use that word to described them though…
I hate that this thread is making me side with red scare fans. Do better, sneerclubbers