where were you when class politics was kill
sheltered the kid too much I think. If he had been made to work in the fields or construction or the mines or something he wouldn't be like this. I don't even know what he's talking about, because he is constantly vague about who he's actually levying these "woke ideology" accusations against, and what these doctrines of "woke ideology" even are. And he just makes shit up to bolster his non-points like "The left is getting money from the Ford foundation! They're so stoopid the Ford Foundation isn't trying to change society!!"
Who is getting money from billionaires on the left? What actual "left" is he talking about who's getting Ford Foundation money?? He's a radlib shitlib just making stuff up to be mad at, exactly embodying everything he accuses these illusory "wokes" as. I've worked alongside and with and in a good few different socialist organizations; and they and we were all broke as hell and got no money from anyone but themselves, because we were working class, unlike this academic petty bourgeois finger-wagger.
And his whole "They changed STRUCTURAL racism to SYSTEMIC racism, so instead of implying that there's racist outcomes even if there's not a racist in charge, they're implying that racism is everywhere and embeds itself in everyone's outlooks" it's both dipshit, and has always been both, and they reinforce each other cyclically. base and superstructure. Basic Marx. For all his whining about how idpol (a liberal thing that he's ascribing to "left") and "woke ideology" (which he doesn't actually describe a doctrine or a specific group espousing this and championing this, just a weird tangent about litigious individualist civil legislation and "diversity consultants") 'obscuring class lines and betraying itself from Marxism, he doesn't seem to have actually read much Marx or many Marxists; because a lot of the shit he's talking about demonstrates large gaps in his knowledge.
Honestly I'd exhaust myself going through all the ways this guy is wrong, backwards, being obtuse, and politically stunted. I don't think he has any connections whatsoever to any actual on the ground working socialist organization and probably never has; I think he probably got criticized by a trans student for being an out of touch old white cishet guy and teaching concepts from fascist authors, and instead of reflecting (or even just ignoring it but not seeing it as some grand conspiracy); does the classic petty bourgeois reactionary "OMG WOKE CULTURE IS AUTHORITARIAN! WOKE IS HURT ME AND ANTI-INTELLECTUAL BC I WANT TO READ FASCIST BOOKS WITHOUT IMAGINING PEOPLE SOMEDAY MAKING ME FEEL BAD FOR IT;" which is incidentally exactly the same kind of shallow and thought-terminating attitude and political ethos that he's ascribing to "wokeness," only from an actual position of power as a university teacher and academic. He is the post-structuralist reactionary "radical" fixating on non-issues and obscuring the real ones that he accuses others of being and doing. The inflated self-importance of these people, who know nothing about and contributed nothing to real working class struggle, is so off-putting.
TL;DR: Porky will sell you the idea of sticking it to porky, so the real way to fight against him is to just shut up and cede this ground to the right.
We tried this with LaRouchebags, they buddy-buddied with Raegan and the KKK. So no thanks.
And we already have a bunch of so-called “leftists” that will kiss the GOP’s feet and cede every culture war to them. We call them democrats.
Chris Hedges is somehow against both Marxism and liberal idpol. What does that make him?
Classic Larouchite... since capitalism and imperialism happened to give him the shaft.... maybe a bit less kooky, but still raddled by western brainworms
nothing. He's a complainer. It's his job to criticize and make it sell for people to feel validated in not liking the way things are or the way other people think things should be, without having to produce any sort of positive construction for how to move past or solve the problems either way
anti-intellectualism and authoritarianism are deeply linked. One saw this during Covid, right? There was zero discussion of any dissent from the official line around any of these measures, lockdowns, the use of experimental vaccines. Mandates firing people who didn’t want to take these vaccines. There was no discussion on the left about this.
It’s the guidance counselors and the principles that are pushing the trans club
don’t be surprised if there’s a backlash when that becomes the official ideology, and everyone is supposed to just like accept the preconceived arguments of that lobby
christian goes on about how his genX understands leftism and how he’s embarrassed by millennials/genZ leftism, how they’ve fallen into a woke trap and wear masks and get vaccines and call themselves marxists
Gen X had such a little understanding of any "ism" that they had a big sit-in protest campaign during the 2008 collapse without even any coherent demands let alone a political program, and it dissolved into a camping trip that produced zero results for anything and zero lessons even, because they didn't actually try anything specific to learn from --- it amounted to nothing from the nothing that they understood and then they all went home to continue brooding and moping and making that their whole personality like before. Which is why these people make money and livings off of complaining and criticizing everything and nay-saying everything without ever having (or being expected to have) a real positive construction or way forward or alternative solution to everything they tear down. They're definitional wreckers because that's all they do is wreck, wreck with floral language to sell books so they can wreck more and turn the classic GenX "individualist rebellion of moping" into another reinforcer of the status quo; one that is more obstructive of people trying to do real actual positive advocacy of literally anything than even the reactionaries who at least pose a real material antithesis.
They're professional energy vampires and Gen X "leftism" is represented very well in them
would not be surprising, christian encourages leftists to go beyond stale boring theory and get some interesting and exciting ideas from the far right
‘this admitted racist who wants to get rid of the civil rights act actually makes some good points’, ‘the woke student mob radicalised my dad and got him fired’
I think that’s where a lot of the left is at these days, that it is cutting itself off for more interesting ideas. And it’s one of the ways that the right has gotten a kind of cultural upward hand on the left by, perhaps cynically, but entertaining ideas. And people are, all people, I think, are intellectually hungry. They might not seem intellectually hungry, I’m not saying that everybody wants to read esoteric theory, no. But people have ideas about stuff. People have ideas about reality. I mean, the number of people in this country who are interested in things is enormous, right? And if the left is just offering a set of kind of, “just so” stories and prefabricated pat answers, it becomes intellectually boring and people will turn away. So that’s another problem with all this stuff that in shutting down and policing thought and policing speech and policing thought and turning away from the unclean authors and ideas, the left is painting itself into a corner.
‘leftists these days need to get some far-right intellectual stimulation from the cynically entertaining ideas of south park’
Both, but Triumph in particular. Set it up and “…FOR ME TO POOP ON!”
Now I need to do one.
Hexbear’s favorite pig be like: “Wow, these are an excellent pair of enlarged gonads…”
Show
I think their issue is on focusing on tokenism or identity in of itself instead of how a proleterian of one or multiple identities might interact with capitalism; e.g, how an indigenous person, an LGBTQ person, each have their own specific yet categorically proleterian interactions and experiences of living under capitalism, and is managed by capitalism & the state.
Seems they're trying to say that liberalism hijacks identity politics to shelter the capitalist system from serious critique, and deflects and redirects academic and intellectual critique to the avenue of amelioration and reform of the capitalist & state welfare systems.
I couldn't get much further, but knowing Chris Hedges' works, I'd like to think that his, and perhaps Christian Parenti's, call-to-action is to emphasize how identities are part of the broader class experience instead of isolated islands of lived experience; each of the issues of the working class are interrelated. i.e, We are not free until all of us are free.
At least that's what I want to think from Chris Hedges. I don't know if he does have this genuine beliefs or he just entertains anyone who wants to get on his show; he still has Jimmy Dore as a guest though.
He did have excellent opinion pieces and news regarding Palestine though. I guess I'll just regard him as the same manner as Norman Finkelstein.
Seems they're trying to say that liberalism hijacks identity politics to shelter the capitalist system from serious critique, and deflects and redirects academic and intellectual critique to the avenue of amelioration and reform of the capitalist & state welfare systems.
I guess the part that really gets me is Hedges also rejects Marxism, so what serious critique of capitalism is he trying to accomplish?
I've loosely followed Hedges' career for several years since I read his book, Empire of Illusion.
Because he's a journalist who tours countries and interviews people, his experiences are anecdotal and real. He touched grass for a living while his contemporaries were in hotel rooms in safe areas in conflict zones, e.g: he was an active duty journalist in the wars in Yugoslavia and the uprisings in Palestine. So while it is a personal experience he brings to his analysis, his anecdotes are not without empirical merit, nor does he remove empiricism from his books and articles.
In that sense, Hedges thinks of himself as a prognosticator of capitalism's and humanity's fate and a diagnostician of our current state of affairs. He is deliberately vague on a post-revolutionary society- he does not know or have an imagination on what one would look like.
Hedges claims there should be some style of Nordic "socialism"/social democracy, he may even think there are some aspects of capitalism worth having but Hedges is quite critical on private control, operation, and ownership of fossil fuels, etc. He probably would go along with a mass proleterian communist revolution if one were to come along.
Hedges does not specifically advocate for these positions, but instead chooses to be more of a critic than advocate of capitalism, liberalism, Western hegemony, etc. Ultimately, what he does explicitly advocate for is for the resurgence of non-violent mass movements to retake power and pressure both state and capital to capitulate to the demands and aspirations of the public. Not through voting but organizing, educating, agitating, and civil disobedience and resistance. While Hedges says he is not a pacifist, he does write that because the state "speaks" violence much more brutally and brazenly, non-violence - distinct from passive resistance - is a more sophisticated form of resistance than violence is.
He does revere leaders like MLK but Hedges is not ignorant of the context and parallel movements that had violent resistance in its time, or that sometimes it is necessary. (e.g, Palestine)
What Hedges is trying to accomplish is the advocacy fo that old axioms: educate, agitate, organize. Or touch grass with other people. What every "breadtuber" just ultimately has to advocate for and toward. Because that is all going on in the moment; there is no Lenin or vanguard here in the US or West to catapult change in this current hour, year, decade.
On Marx & Hedges:
I remember reading or hearing him speak about Marx; not as that Marx's analyses are wrong but his solutions are. He says he doesn't really believe the proleteriat are the origin and catalyst of revolt - as we can see in the decade of the 2010s that spontaneous proleterian that amounted to little - but the intellectual and middle manager class of decaying institutions and states that find no hope of advancement and self-actualization, that these people who abandon the project are ultimately the vanguard leaders - these disillusioned administrators of capital and empire - that lead worker revolutions.
I think it's fair to be critical of Marx, Lenin, and other leftist thought leaders because it still is a science of sociology and understanding our world. Heretics are necessary to defend and adapt your ideas toward, to reinforce current ones or adapt new strategies for advancing political struggles.
Ultimately, I just think this interview is a bad one. He has bad interviews, like the previous one on his website with Jimmy Dore. :facepalm
