Those dying here, the lonely
Forgotten by the world,
Our tongue becomes for them
The language of an ancient planet.
Until, when all is legend
And many years have passed,
On a great Campo dei Fiori
Rage will kindle at a poet's word.
-from Campo dei Fiori by Czeslaw Milosz*
I have thought about it and drunk several san franscisco anchor summer wheat beers (4.5% alcohol by volume) and I have come to the important realization that the reason the national socialists did so very well in Gemany during the last century was not due to social forces, class conflict, the manipulation of the rude masses, the failure of national myths, nor anything else of the sort.
No. It is because the swastika is such a cool fucking symbol. You spray paint (well, hand-paint back then) that fucker on a building and the people on the inside of that building won't think "oh no vandals". They will think a zodiac killer is marking them for death. It helps if you actually kill people too, sure, but my point is that the swastika looks like a magical death symbol and that is how transformative social movements get off the ground: by having a symbol or phrase to paint on things that people can then rally behind.
Imagine, if you will, if the nazi movement's symbol had been a dong. Nobody would want to paint that on anything and if you did, the people inside would probably be more confused than intimidated. Nobody would think they were joining a badass mystical Thule society with a dong.
The graffiti is the match that sparks the flame of the peoples revolution. If there were a symbol that encapsulated "this economic system is rigged, i'm just waiting for y'all to say the word and I'll head to the barricade" and people started spray painting it on limousines and the burned out remains of banks, you'd capture this forlorn nation's heart in an instant. You need a cool-ass symbol. A dong won't do it. It has to be a swastika.
*http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/179942
camera_obscura posted:Well not until you invent another symbol like that. What drunk wine baby was trying to suggest was that the organizations succeeded not on the basis of their ideas, but rather because their logos were top-tier.
i'm not disagreeing, i'm just saying, that fist is top tier.
logo design is hard.
pretty catchy and cool imo
tears posted:hey wine baby have u seen this symbol?
pretty catchy and cool imo
it's not though, capitalist media depictions have basically made it into a joke. like i said in the thread about the front page redesign of rhizzone, the entire corpus of pr and marketing is obviously used to engineer the most horrible aspects of modern society but there's no reason we can't use it and learn from it ourselves -- and being attached to old symbols is like being attached to old dogma. isn't there some good old quote about not letting sentimentalism get in the way of getting things done
the reality of the current moment is we should leave that salted earth behind
tears posted:hey wine baby have u seen this symbol?
pretty catchy and cool imo
whoa holy crap what is THAT? I want some of THAT!
Edited by winebaby ()
tears posted:hey wine baby have u seen this symbol?
pretty catchy and cool imo
Are those supposed to symbolic of something or is it just like, cool ancient weapons bro?
drwhat posted:it's not though, capitalist media depictions have basically made it into a joke. like i said in the thread about the front page redesign of rhizzone, the entire corpus of pr and marketing is obviously used to engineer the most horrible aspects of modern society but there's no reason we can't use it and learn from it ourselves -- and being attached to old symbols is like being attached to old dogma. isn't there some good old quote about not letting sentimentalism get in the way of getting things done
the reality of the current moment is we should leave that salted earth behind
what do you think about marching around london holding up a big ole portrait of stalin? should we discard that too?
tears posted:what do you think about marching around london holding up a big ole portrait of stalin? should we discard that too?
yeah, absolutely. i don't see any value in historical figure worship. shoving a guy's picture around doesn't accomplish any actual political communication, it's purely there for its subjective connotative meaning. if you already know everything i know, hey look, stalin! isn't that great? and if you don't know what i know, then.. stalin! isn't that great?
people rally around heroes but dead heroes from foreign contexts have a hard time winning converts.
i know zizek is a big old coke-nose punching bag around here these days but there was a moment when he was often talking about the need to essentially rediscover communism from base principles, in a contemporary concept, and i completely agree. there should be new rallying cries about the common worker, new fights, new idols and new icons. and there will be. clutching The Olds is a fear reflex. it's dead weight. extract the core of the greatest ideals and move forward. imo.
gyrofry posted:which other sciences should we rediscover from first principles
it is cute and fun to yell about how this alternative way of structuring society is a science but again it only holds water with people who already agree with you
drwhat posted:tears posted:what do you think about marching around london holding up a big ole portrait of stalin? should we discard that too?
yeah, absolutely. i don't see any value in historical figure worship. shoving a guy's picture around doesn't accomplish any actual political communication, it's purely there for its subjective connotative meaning. if you already know everything i know, hey look, stalin! isn't that great? and if you don't know what i know, then.. stalin! isn't that great?
people rally around heroes but dead heroes from foreign contexts have a hard time winning converts.
i know zizek is a big old coke-nose punching bag around here these days but there was a moment when he was often talking about the need to essentially rediscover communism from base principles, in a contemporary concept, and i completely agree. there should be new rallying cries about the common worker, new fights, new idols and new icons. and there will be. clutching The Olds is a fear reflex. it's dead weight. extract the core of the greatest ideals and move forward. imo.
Edited by animedad ()
drwhat posted:tears posted:what do you think about marching around london holding up a big ole portrait of stalin? should we discard that too?
yeah, absolutely. i don't see any value in historical figure worship. shoving a guy's picture around doesn't accomplish any actual political communication, it's purely there for its subjective connotative meaning. if you already know everything i know, hey look, stalin! isn't that great? and if you don't know what i know, then.. stalin! isn't that great?
people rally around heroes but dead heroes from foreign contexts have a hard time winning converts.
i know zizek is a big old coke-nose punching bag around here these days but there was a moment when he was often talking about the need to essentially rediscover communism from base principles, in a contemporary concept, and i completely agree. there should be new rallying cries about the common worker, new fights, new idols and new icons. and there will be. clutching The Olds is a fear reflex. it's dead weight. extract the core of the greatest ideals and move forward. imo.
You really trust this guy?
MarianneSadd posted:You really trust this guy?
you're right, that's the same guy I'm referring to, who said the thing I typed. however just because I agree with one of his million utterances doesn't mean I also agree with the other 999,999. this is completely irrelevant to the conversation.
drwhat posted:you're right, Zizek has forever corrupted those words strung together in a row by the fact that they exited his mouth, much like we can never use the colour r*d because it was present in nazi symbolism. rip that hue, but we must march on purely
fuck, guess I need to throw out all my wine. Maybe I can learn to think rosé isn't crap.
MarxUltor posted:Maybe I can learn to think rosé isn't crap.
you can't.
shriekingviolet posted:MarxUltor posted:Maybe I can learn to think rosé isn't crap.
you can't.
you are making me 
stgop