The Nathan J Robinson haters were right all along

  • please_dont [he/him]
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    edit-2
    3 years ago

    Are you telling me that the openly anti-marxist self described "utopian socialist" that makes a point to dress and talk like a 19th century London dandy has bourgeois class interests and mindset and manipulated/shitted on his workers?

    Edit: Even beyond his horrible marx and other takes that should have alerted some people, member when he went all in on the Tara Read allegations and then stopped once it came time to drop in line and vote for Biden, and then deleted most of the Tara Reade tweets immediately .Or when he launched that slander piece on Zizek on Current Affairs (reportedly according to Zizek sources) under Chomsky’s order

    • LibsEatPoop [any]
      ·
      3 years ago

      And I fucking doubt any of the other workers wanted to take the magazine away from him or whatever else he fucking thinks. They just wanted his share/power of the magazine to be what he contributed. More importantly, they wanted to have a say in how this leftist magazine was run. What the fuck kind of socialist would be against that?

    • Mardoniush [she/her]
      ·
      3 years ago

      Socialist guy who runs a business abandons Socialism under pressure, film at 11. (Film is Battleship Potemkin)

      • please_dont [he/him]
        ·
        3 years ago

        Turns out Anarcho-Willy Wonkaism with establishment characteristics didnt get him very far

    • 420blazeit69 [he/him]
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      3 years ago

      deleted most of the Tara Reade tweets immediately

      https://www.currentaffairs.org/2020/05/the-attacks-on-tara-reade-are-unbelievable-bullshit

      ?

      • please_dont [he/him]
        ·
        3 years ago

        most means most and i said personal tweets, that he had quite plenty actualy. Deleting articles is/would be way more egregious and probably not as easy even if he wanted to

        • 420blazeit69 [he/him]
          ·
          3 years ago

          The only relevant question is whether he was trying to bury the Tara Reade story, and he clearly was not. Caring about personal tweets over published, in-depth work is the definition of too online.

          This is a huge fuck up on his part, but it doesn't mean everything the guy has ever done has been bad, and it doesn't legitimate criticism that never made sense in the first place.

          • please_dont [he/him]
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            3 years ago

            Im not saying he tried to actively burry the Tara Reade story altogther or that him initially covering it was bad or fake (i expected of any left of socdem media while Bernie was still viable to cover it tbh) but that he massively hopped into the Biden train and support "from the left" along Chomsky's lines , dropped any active critisism and tried to retroactively underplay the degree in which his public posts were anti-biden/biden disqualifying in order to save face for his current support and hide its inconsistency and not recognize its element hypocricy. And so showed signs of shaky principles and decision making

            • DetroitLolcat [he/him]
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              edit-2
              3 years ago

              Eh - I dunno about this one. He's held the Chomsky position on voting - that it's such a small part of our political lives that you might as well vote for the lesser evil and go on with your day - long before 2020 and consistently criticized Biden before, during, and after the election.

              He never dropped criticism of Biden, he wrote a scathing piece in August of last year on Biden calling him "appalling...a dutiful servant of corporate interests" that literally brought up the Tara Reade story to mention that his record on sexual assault is Trump-like. He also stated the objective fact that a Trump presidency is worse than a Biden presidency. https://www.currentaffairs.org/2020/08/an-ineffectual-biden-presidency-is-better-for-the-left-than-an-actively-authoritarian-trump-presidency/

              We don't need to make shit up about NJR when this scandal is more than enough to bury him.

        • Shylo
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          edit-2
          1 year ago

          deleted by creator

    • KiaKaha [he/him]
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      3 years ago

      Source on the Zizek piece being a Chomsky-directed slander?

      I might need to apologise to someone.

  • WeedReference420 [he/him, they/them]
    ·
    3 years ago

    NJR was worried that unionised staff would limit the amount of sailor suits and giant lollypops he could claim on company expenses.

    For real though this sucks, always knew he had bad takes but this is beyond the pale.

  • LibsEatPoop [any]
    ·
    3 years ago

    What. No.

    I...goddamnit. Current Affairs is what got me into leftism at a time when Jacobin was "too radical" for me. The style of writing, the visual design, the podcast, the people everything was just incredible. I...can't believe it.

    This is horrible. Full support to all (ex)-workers of Current Affairs. And fuck NJR.

    • 420clownpeen [they/them,any]
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      3 years ago

      Say what you will about communists worshipping old dead people too much, but at least dead people can't do anything more to disappoint you.

      • FidelCastro [he/him]
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        edit-2
        3 years ago

        :lenin-sleeping:

        at least dead people can’t do anything more to disappoint you.

        (monkey paw curls)

        :lenin-shining:

        • FLAMING_AUBURN_LOCKS [she/her]
          ·
          3 years ago

          Fidel comes back to life only to willingly step on the rake the CIA labelled “Foot Activated Ice Cream Dispensing Pedal” and gets sideshow Bob’d to death

    • Nagarjuna [he/him]
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      3 years ago

      Jacobin was “too radical” for me.

      Wow, Jacobin wasn't even too radical when I was still a bernie lib

  • DirtbagVegan [he/him]
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    3 years ago

    Motherfuckers will be like "yeah, Marxism is authoritarian," and then be like "I should be the boss, though."

  • ennuid [he/him]
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    3 years ago

    I give NJR like two years before he starts talking about cancel culture and how leftists are so mean and dogmatic that they made him become conservative

      • ennuid [he/him]
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        edit-2
        3 years ago

        Name a single rw figure who does not look like a clown

        Wait fuck he looks like :joker-dancing:

      • Sushi_Desires
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        3 years ago

        I think he’ll go the enlightened centrist route of saying radical demands are too impractical/authoritarian

        I think you're right here. NJR put out a response about this debacle and he says that he 'didn't want the workers to own the magazine because he didn't want anyone to own the magazine' :galaxy-brain:

  • comi [he/him]
    ·
    3 years ago

    Socialism means my private property is distributed? Not so fast :ancap-good:

    • comi [he/him]
      ·
      3 years ago

      Wait but it says board of directors, who the fuck sits there?

      • LibsEatPoop [any]
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        3 years ago

        This tweet suggests its other (longer term?) employees. And turns out they too support the workers and not the boss.

        as a member of the @curaffairs board, i am limited in what i can say beyond the collective statement below, other than i am deeply upset and disappointed by the events that led us here. please see here for a statement from my friends and colleagues: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1qzPaisfCy0wNwVYxwaf443z8Aom4ELTU/view

        • determinism2 [he/him]
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          3 years ago

          I remember listening to some podcast they did three years ago where they talked about how they were "now a worker coop". I'm just so confused and disappointed at this news. What the fuck.

          • mittens [he/him]
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            edit-2
            3 years ago

            You see that's what weirds me out, NJR was banging on his drum about CA being a co-op already. lmao I guess you need to have that shit on paper first before you can let your boss call the workplace democratic

        • ABigguhPizzahPieh [none/use name,any]
          ·
          3 years ago

          1910s: Kautsky goes back on his entire body of work and won't go through with his stated political beliefs. He is branded "renegade" by Lenin.

          2020s: a fuckin fancy gentleman character goes back on everything he's written because he wants to run a fucking magazine. Even the title of renegade is too high an honor

  • JamesConeZone [they/them]
    ·
    3 years ago

    the worst part about this is that the left can no longer be dandies :deeper-sadness:

  • DivineChaos100 [none/use name]
    ·
    3 years ago

    He was fighting against vanguardists so hard he himself started to see himself as the vanguard. :stirner-shocked:

  • Lester_Peterson [he/him]
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    edit-2
    3 years ago

    This NJR article sure aged great

    So, the two problems with the modern corporation are: 1. It’s owned by shareholders, who are disproportionately from the upper classes 2. It’s controlled by executives, not the people who do the actual labor to produce the goods and services. It’s “capitalistic” because the profits flow to capitalists; people who make their money by contributing their capital rather than their labor. Socialists advocate rethinking institutions so that they’re owned by their workers or society at large, and they’re controlled democratically.

      • ElGosso [he/him]
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        edit-2
        3 years ago

        You're welcome, comrade

        It is my duty to remember the ancient memes, from the before times :chomsky-yes-honey:

        • ennuid [he/him]
          ·
          3 years ago

          Yeah it actually made me extremely nostalgic for the summers of my youth. No cap

    • ElGosso [he/him]
      ·
      3 years ago

      Yes I make this joke whenever Nathan J. Robinson comes up and no I will never stop