where were you when class politics was kill
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.
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
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.
Who the fuck wrote this? "RonJeremyCorbyn?" Is there a part about how we need to kiss strangers during New Years parties or we're "embarrassing leftism?"
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
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
Lots of wreckers that came to Hexbear and got banned on a number of alt accounts had that same take. Might be a junior boomer genX thing.
It’s the guidance counselors and the principles that are pushing the trans club
This shit was picked up directly from South Park, wasn't it? God I hate that show and its decades of propaganda.
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’
cynically entertaining ideas of south park
South Park is the mental equivalent of habit-forming junk food, with messaging like "caring about things is STUPID" and "apathy makes you SMART." It doesn't even look like a political message to the treat hogs absorbing it as they have for roughly thirty years now.
What a fine hardhat-brained ideologically puritan sort of leftism...
Show
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Chris Hedges is somehow against both Marxism and liberal idpol. What does that make him?
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
Classic Larouchite... since capitalism and imperialism happened to give him the shaft.... maybe a bit less kooky, but still raddled by western brainworms
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
Oh yeah, we've been losing for 200 years.
That's not true, even if some victories didn't last forever.
maybe.