#121
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parabolart posted:

why did this get bumped At Large? tia



He died

#122
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acephalousuniverse posted:

god shut up. i dont even care if you agree with me shut up



quality posters and posts

#123
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i read this thread a while ago and it reminded me that Thomas Frank wrote good stuff regardless of his later work, such as The Conquest of Cool and New Consensus for Old: Cultural Studies from Left to Right, that talked about how post-structuralism, "post-modernism", etc. in practical reality diverted liberatory energy into consumerism and segmented marketing in the United States. i disagree with him on a lot of the specifics because he is really a baby with the bathwater guy in almost everything he writes, but Communists should still probably read it anyway given the massive explosion in pop culture commentary as a cheap commodity.
#124
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babyhueypnewton posted:

acephalousuniverse posted:

god shut up. i dont even care if you agree with me shut up

quality posters and posts



i always wondered if this guy's account was taken over by mustang or if he really went mustang-style crazy. i suppose it's the same thing according to the empirical science of memes.

#125
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it was me, i made that person mad,,, whoops
#126
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deadken has condemned his own response to this article, in particular this part:

...The fact that Fisher’s castle analogy fails so spectacularly as an image might suggest that it’s being aimed at the wrong target.

It’s frustrating, because I don’t necessarily disagree with all of what Fisher says. A leftist movement should be built explicitly on class analysis (without forgetting all the ways in which race, gender, sexuality and disability can serve to constitute class). Communism must involve a fidelity to an absolute and an appeal to what we have in common rather than what particularises us. (It’s an open question whether too many people are actually positing the inverse, or if Fisher’s tilting at windmills and calling them giants and castles.) At the same time I’m unconvinced that snarky behaviour on Twitter has more of a capacity to destroy the left than actual material forces, or that it makes sense to evaluate which individual people are doing the most to raise class consciousness. I’m particularly unconvinced that a call for comradeship and unity requires marginalised people to abandon their own solidarities, especially when faced with the constant threat of actual physical violence.



#127
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I agree with 2017 deadken, what still seemed fringe in 2013 is now well known enough to have an entire terminology describing it. Not sure Mark Fischer described it all that well but you can't blame him for trying to grasp the new form of identity politics when it had yet to stabilize as social justice warriors. Though clearly technology is important in understanding how identity politics are enabled and twitter is probably the most restrictive. So complaining about identity politics on twitter is like complaining about libertarianism in a silicon valley tech company.
#128
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the term "social justice warriors" and the ideology surrounding it weren't at all fringe in 2013 and the "terminology describing it", if you're talking about things such as "social justice warriors", is a far-right rhetorical farce with no sound material basis to how it's used
#129
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hi mustang
#130
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calling people "social justice warriors" from the left to attack the concealment of class in discussion is imo a limp attempt to replace material analysis of trends on the left with a farcically iconoclastic opposition stance that suggests the person using it hopes to capture support from the most pavlovian corners of the far right. it's understandable how someone might make the mistake before learning better but in the end it's self-defeating and a little pathetic.
#131
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cars posted:

the term "social justice warriors" and the ideology surrounding it weren't at all fringe in 2013 and the "terminology describing it", if you're talking about things such as "social justice warriors", is a far-right rhetorical farce with no sound material basis to how it's used





btw this is the only reason any of my posts would ever appear to be in the negatives, mustang's alts.. good to keep in mind

#132
UNUSUALY COOL
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i call on everyone to mass upvote my posts to defend the forums. it's the only way.
#133
Online
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cars posted:

the term "social justice warriors" and the ideology surrounding it weren't at all fringe in 2013 and the "terminology describing it", if you're talking about things such as "social justice warriors", is a far-right rhetorical farce with no sound material basis to how it's used

yeah by 2013 people like slashie had already destroyed wddp by running out willa for saying "healthy weight" &c

#134
Online
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cars posted:

i call on everyone to mass upvote my posts to defend the forums. it's the only way.

i call on catdj to delete mustangs dang acocunts so he has cant vote and roll around in nazi filth in his cell

#135
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The problem is we don't have the terminology to describe it in any other way. I agree that in the popular conception there's very little materialism and a whole lot of right wing conspiracy but I have not found the left has a serious analysis of identity politics in their new formation. Obviously it's petty-bourgeois but the use of identity for reactionary purposes (rather than simply self-promotion by the petty bourgeoisie) seems to be something new which different theories are trying to grasp in their partial and unmaterialist ways. Maybe I'm wrong and identity has always been weaponized by imperialism though I can't think of an example. Like no one in the 70s condemned vietnam for not believing in free sexuality and flower power, now that is the first response to any imperialist actiom.
#136
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ilmdge posted:

yeah by 2013 people like slashie had already destroyed wddp by running out willa for saying "healthy weight" &c



i don't know what this is

#137
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ilmdge posted:

cars posted:

the term "social justice warriors" and the ideology surrounding it weren't at all fringe in 2013 and the "terminology describing it", if you're talking about things such as "social justice warriors", is a far-right rhetorical farce with no sound material basis to how it's used

yeah by 2013 people like slashie had already destroyed wddp by running out willa for saying "healthy weight" &c



Like many things lf was ahead of its time

#138
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babyhueypnewton posted:

The problem is we don't have the terminology to describe it in any other way. I agree that in the popular conception there's very little materialism and a whole lot of right wing conspiracy but I have not found the left has a serious analysis of identity politics in their new formation. Obviously it's petty-bourgeois but the use of identity for reactionary purposes (rather than simply self-promotion by the petty bourgeoisie) seems to be something new which different theories are trying to grasp in their partial and unmaterialist ways. Maybe I'm wrong and identity has always been weaponized by imperialism though I can't think of an example. Like no one in the 70s condemned vietnam for not believing in free sexuality and flower power, now that is the first response to any imperialist actiom.



that sounds like work to be done instead of a time to okay when people slack and lazily imitate fascists

#139
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like "this method of dealing with things is fascist and objectively right-wing but we better accept it because otherwise we have to think and work diligently"... probably never a good excuse?
#140
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Fair enough. I think Fischer is mistaken to focus on individual action, even at an aggregate level of morality. I think the problem is structural and has to be understood from mode of production -> means of production -> ideology -> individuality so i would go post? neoliberalism -> finance, services, and advertising machinery like twitter -> social atomization and crab mentality on the left -> vampire castle/sjws/whatever. I think very little attention has been paid to the means of production, for example how social media creates a new incentive structure for labor aristocracy to rise among the producers of petty-bourgeois knowledge (obviously deadken is an example of this and his future as a writer for vice and the guardian was already implicit here) in particular ways and the mode of production itself in that the collapse of neoliberalism is real and old theories can't just pretend like we live in the 90s and reality tv is some new reflection of atomization and post cinematic vision or whatever. Everyone seems to have the ideology and individual behavior down but that obviously leads to right wing conspiracy where behavior is itself the cause of class.
#141
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babyhueypnewton posted:

Like no one in the 70s condemned vietnam for not believing in free sexuality and flower power, now that is the first response to any imperialist actiom.



the milton friedman / ayn rand wing did, in general if not in specific, they loved to talk about the supposed rigid moral puritanism of communist countries as a result of "statism". and yeah i think the emphasis on cultural propriety thing is evidence of the infiltration of their ideas into the liberal left, sure, popular culture in the West has done a lot to do that, I was forced to read and write about "Anthem" in public school, and so on. but i mean, damn... don't do their work for them, don't call that "social justice", don't lose sight of the liberalization of tsar-era laws under lenin, etc. Don't assume the defeat of the left from the parts of left theory and practice that need to be improved, or assume that people on the other side of arguments on the value or nature of intersectionality are the enemy. that hasn't worked yet to gull members of the far right into joining the left and it's not going to work anytime soon. work with what you have and do so in good faith.

there may (and i mean "may") be no nice neat single term for what i think you're trying to describe, the way that certain parts of the so-called "left" have been gulled into abandoning class analysis for the signifiers of identity politics, because it may be that thinking about it in the ways that view it as a single bad Thing isn't factually accurate and achieves nothing practically for the left. i mean it's not like that's ever a concern of the right when it crafts and popularizes a term like "social justice warrior", it's a bogeyman that works among those who use it because it denigrates and attack the left for an audience with bourgeois values that drools at certain key words. absolutely everything that group produces in terms of rhetoric should be opposed, discarded or subject to the keenest edge of critique to determine the actual nature behind its spread as a term among the right, which they obviously have no interest in understanding because it would likely undermine their use of it.

#142
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this guy killed himself. fucked up.
#143
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roseweird posted:

op problematically implies all vampires have access to a castle

#144
UNUSUALY COOL
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babyhueypnewton posted:

Fair enough. I think Fischer is mistaken to focus on individual action, even at an aggregate level of morality. I think the problem is structural and has to be understood from mode of production -> means of production -> ideology -> individuality so i would go post? neoliberalism -> finance, services, and advertising machinery like twitter -> social atomization and crab mentality on the left -> vampire castle/sjws/whatever. I think very little attention has been paid to the means of production, for example how social media creates a new incentive structure for labor aristocracy to rise among the producers of petty-bourgeois knowledge (obviously deadken is an example of this and his future as a writer for vice and the guardian was already implicit here) in particular ways and the mode of production itself in that the collapse of neoliberalism is real and old theories can't just pretend like we live in the 90s and reality tv is some new reflection of atomization and post cinematic vision or whatever. Everyone seems to have the ideology and individual behavior down but that obviously leads to right wing conspiracy where behavior is itself the cause of class.



i mean i think a lot of that is really a symptom, though, right? like of course deadken feels a little different now; it's his friends whose feelings are being hurt. and i can relate to that to some degree. but it still seems to me like shadowboxing people who are speaking from positions of relative powerlessness in society, people who have found relative strength through participation in the left, can be such an easy excuse not to self-critique and put your back into it in advancing collective goals.

the closer you get to the bourgeois drawing room, the easier it is to lean back and say, "ahh if only these pesky people would understand, i'm just doing what's good for them too" because the entire social construction of bourgeois society is there to cushion you. that's what i think gets lost here when people talk about so-and-so getting "brought down" or whatever by thoroughgoing critique, that there is actually an entire economic system behind them that rewards them for refusing to improve themselves, okays them for it, worships and idolizes them for it, regardless of the soundness of the critique, and i think by 2017 it's getting a little ridiculous to ignore that.

#145
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i think it's instructive to look at russell brand's actual response to the debate at the core of the essay. he said he was acting sexist and we need to be careful because that can worm its way into us. he didn't seem insincere or like he had a gun to his head. he self-criticized. that seems good and correct and i don't think it, like, prevented him or the left from achieving anything.
#146
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cars posted:

ilmdge posted:
yeah by 2013 people like slashie had already destroyed wddp by running out willa for saying "healthy weight" &c


i don't know what this is



slashie is a millionaire heiress who got kicks from attacking people on lf and its offsites over trivialities. apparnetly she currently posts on D&D as Tiny Brontosaurus

wddp was an sa offsite based on "community" that built up around the helldump thread "worst d&d poster"

willa rogers was a leftist poster on sa but i dont know anything about her

#147
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the only thing i remember about willa rogers is that i argued with her on old LF when i was still advancing the idea of voting for the democrats or similar parties. fwiw i think that can make sense in certain situations but i think i was proven wrong on the specifics in that argument since it happened in 2007
#148
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i don't think Willa was particularly radical either, but who knows how people have changed over the years. iirc she stood out on D&D because she was more pessimistic about obama than most. on twitter i think she was a berniebro.
#149
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Hmm guess you're right. My advice to Mark Fischer's ghost is to stay off twitter.
#150
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actually the song 'monster mash' teaches us that ghosts and vampires are aligned in thier material interests
#151
Mike Nelson here.
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In the tempest that this article caused I noticed it made most people say stupid things, although I had not read the actual article, and I couldn't decipher what their arguments for or against the article meant. Since then, I haven't read the article and I've been keen to ignore ever-wider numbers of editorials. Again, it could well be a good article, but I'll ever know.
#152
Online
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(my eyes turn into spinning spirals) YUou will read the article. You will read the article
#153
Kurdt
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the rhizzone is the answer to the question of the vampire castle, if it is a question
#154
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rip. i didn't always agree with him, but he was a decent guy who i've been reading and posting with longer than any other internet leftist. fwiw he's been a lot more influential wrt online leftism than he will get credit for.
#155
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cars posted:

ilmdge posted:

yeah by 2013 people like slashie had already destroyed wddp by running out willa for saying "healthy weight" &c

i don't know what this is



I bet you do.

#156
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Man bullied to death after identifying major bullying problem on the left.
#157
Poronto
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cars posted:

the term "social justice warriors" and the ideology surrounding it weren't at all fringe in 2013 and the "terminology describing it", if you're talking about things such as "social justice warriors", is a far-right rhetorical farce with no sound material basis to how it's used



i dont think the critique was at all well developed and the critique of the critique didnt exist at all, which is where we must be to avoid being little babies

#158
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Keven posted:

I bet you do.



well now i do because someone explained it, doy.

#159
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littlegreenpills posted:

i dont think the critique was at all well developed and the critique of the critique didnt exist at all, which is where we must be to avoid being little babies



elaborate

#160
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solzhesnitchin posted:

rip. i didn't always agree with him, but he was a decent guy who i've been reading and posting with longer than any other internet leftist. fwiw he's been a lot more influential wrt online leftism than he will get credit for.



yeah agreed. i have his 2014 book on his lifelong struggle with depression to finish and this is i guess a reason to do so however sad.