Virgil Texas has declared war on Anarchism
Edit: Lol did I start a site wide struggle session?
Edit2: keep it going. Is this the most commented normal post yet?
Fuck, you're all a bunch of liberals. Grandpa is sounding like a neoliberal dipshit and thank god for someone putting him in his place and calling out his dumb ass toxic takes.
Fucking thank you Virgil and Brie! Fuck Noam, dude.
And his dumb ass takes shouldn't be called out??? Why the fuck are some of you taking this so personally. He's saying dumb ass shit that is actively harmful. Fuck off liberal.
I'll forever respect Chomsky for the years of activism and writing. But the views he's expressing here are shit and should be called out. I don't know if he's gone senile or just fell behind the times, but he's not even speaking our language anymore.
He (wrongly) thinks that voting for Biden would create better conditions to build a left wing movement, so he says to vote for Biden.
I thought we all agreed that whether you vote for Biden doesn't really matter very much anyway, so I'm not gonna spend my brain cells getting pissed off at people who say to vote for Biden unless they're being really shitty about it.
Wait, Biden is obviously going to actively devastate our capabilities, but do you really know if Ivanka 2024's blatantly fraudulent election won't lead to us getting killed?
Biden will do jack shit and make a 2024 republican likely, but if Trump wins now he's going to spend the next 4 years dismantling the vote even more, and will make it even more likely than that.
But he still will need a Republican win to help threaten states to avoid state charges. The state prosecutors aren't invested in federal power structures in the same way as feds are, and they actually think it would be cool if they got a PRESIDENT
How many state sanctioned murders of white American leftists happened under Obama? Kenosha style terrorism and the Portland assassination will only get worse as we descend into fascism under Trump.
Neoliberalism sucks balls but fascism is measurably worse
We're talking about different conditions here, and I think you can look at Obama's ferguson response combined with Biden's race record to predict how he's going to treat the protests, especially considering that his opposition will be the Republican party, i.e. there will be no mainstream criticism of him for being too heavy handed.
Honestly, though, I'd break with the consensus here to say that there is a meaningful difference between a President Biden and a President Trump, but I'm still voting Green because voting for Biden means perpetuating the system that gives us "choices" like this in the first place. We've reached a point where it's either the system goes or the system stays, and the latter wil have disastrous consequences.
Being beaten up by cops is better than assassinated or being state sanctioned murdered by chuds
Source: been beaten up by cops, don't want to be murdered
Chomsky was always kinda iffy even back then. Here's a fun writeup on it, but most interesting I find is his misread on the effectiveness of black radicalism during the Vietnam war. There's also his incessant general Lenin bashing, which is mostly irrelevant in the modern day, but more importantly his whitewashing of America as this great free place thanks to freedom of speech (a very liberal conception of it) or Western Europe as socialist.
He's been saying this stuff for so long that I don't think it's just dementia solidarity with Biden. I remember him saying this stuff when GWB was running.
don't make fun of my grampa, he's owld! whaaaaa.
Yeah, you are. lmao. Fuck off liberal.
They said his opinion was bad and then you got mad at them for not being mad enough
Hey, why you gotta ruin a perfectly nice frothy rage with simple facts like that?
how? wtf are you talking about? he's giving Noam a pass. Fuck giving him a pass. We are not in agreement.
somehow this site is even shittier than the sub.
Hey hey hey, now partner. :hexbear-logo: :hexabear: :hexbear-shining: :og-hex-bear: :AC-CommBear:
You’re hurting my friends feelings.
anti-communism is where you support the Zapatistas, Corbyn, Rev Catalonia, Cuba
He gets a “pass” in that he won’t be punished by us, but he doesn’t get a “pass” in that we should listen to or give any credence to his bullshit
Imagine typing all those out and forgetting linguistics
I'll pay anyone their weight in Reddit gold if they can find me clip of him speaking anything other than english.
Linguistics is where you speak other languages fluently :galaxy-brain:
Not exactly. It is the study of language itself. Though with a mastery of linguistics, the mastery of individual languages themselves is supposedley a simple thing.
the mastery of individual languages themselves is supposedley a simple thing.
says who lol
Are you serious? Lemme guess. Two years of spanish in high school and don't remember a thing, right? Same here till I went back and got a degree in a foreign language. They make you take at least one linguistic class and its still the only class that sticks out in my head till this day. And of course Noam Chomsky's name pops up on literally the first page of the first chapter. The father of one of my classmates was a linguist who worked in tribal areas of Colombia. He could supposedly break down a tribal language in about a day and be fluent in less than a month. I say this because I just find it odd that I've never so much as heard Linguist Number One pronounce a foreign name with any real inflection - much less speak in a foreign language. Anyway.........
there are different aspects to linguistics and having a concrete understanding in one aspect doesn't give you the magical abilities to memorize and pronounce languages well
But it does mean that in 50+ years of public life, international travel and acclaim that the world's premiere linguist should probably , yknow, have a recording of him saying "Hola" out there somewhere. He supposedly sealed the deal with his wife back in the day using his mastery of Hebrew. To be honest, you kinda sound like you don't know much about linguistics.
"brie told me not to harass the guests so nobody show her this post. thanks"
Lol
You think Brie is gonna get tired of Virgil's shit before the year is up?
https://twitter.com/virgiltexas/status/1315667121695862785?s=19
I don't see how there isn't some falling out between the two of them eventually. She seems so constantly done with his shit lmao
Yeah that voting as an individual act bit from a few weeks ago bit from Virgil was annoying af and Virgil is one of my favorite chapos.
He sincerely was not arguing in good faith
Even so, whether voting is a collective or individual act is an unimportant philosophical distinction. I don't care if you consider it collective or individual.
Yeah, I agree more with Virgil than Brie, and I would say that under our neoliberal system voting is an individual act and an aesthetic choice that can foster no real change so long as a politicians are controlled by capitalists (unless you're voting for revolutionaries). But whatever point Virgil was trying to make was so poorly and obtusely argued that I was angry with him on behalf of Brie.
She seemed like she was determined to REFORM his shit in the first episode and uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
Good luck
Reminds me of Brace quote tweeting some psycho right-winger going "I can fix her" lol
I hope not. They're a good duo. But she has every right to be tired of his shit - he may have some deeper/more interesting takes, but she's constantly making extremely well-supported basic points and he can't find in himself the decency to just go along instead of weirdly devil's advocate/irony-shitpost-ing everything.
Anyone who refuses to concede any points on Star Trek space NATO that Wyatt Cenac laid out infallibly deserves the Virgil Texas posting treatment.
I'm not a trekkie, so I could be wrong, but I thought Brie and Wyatt both had good points, so she didn't need to concede anything. And even if she was wrong that one time, she was right 9 other times and Virgil was the one being silly.
Ummm, based_ball has a patreon to help him research the best struggle sessions. For $3 a month, we get to vote on one weekly topic, and the $5 a month tier means you get to vote on a weekly topic from user submissions.
how are they grifting? How I understand it there needs to be a scam involved before something is a grift
Any Leftist who wants money for any reason is obviously an insincere grifter. It's not possible that Briahna Gray or Virgil Texas could offer genuine insights into the current Leftist movement in the US or that they could be entertaining in such a way that they would deserve compensation for their work. Every single left-ish person with a platform is a faux intellectual just trying to scam you out of money, which is obviously true as they cannot be leftists because I am the only true leftist.
Eh, lame take, anarchists can be cool.
Chomsky does need to be bullied tho, o7
That way he can finally take of the mask revealing that he was kissinger all along
Virgil's shitposting somehow got 239 of y'all to comment arguing with each other
the master poster is back, baby
lol poor noam. he's like 100 years old. leave the old man alone
Dude is literally living out the "I dream of a society where I would be guillotined as a conservative." except it's just mild cyberbullying.
Fuck Noam.
Chomsky really be like "If the Nuremberg laws were applied, then every post-war American president would have been hanged" then in his next breath be like "vote blue no matter who"... 😐😬🤐
— Morgan (@discomfiting) August 19, 2020 https://twitter.com/discomfiting/status/1296087537170219008?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
Fuck that. People listen to this guy, and use his opinions as examples of why leftists should do shit. Fuck letting his idiotic takes go unchecked.
He's still talking though. No one's coming to his house and badgering him. He's saying stupid things to a leftist audience. And it's not like he's going to be upset by some youngsters calling him a lib.
I mean, he is still volunteering to go onto political speaking engagements, I think he is into it. It's not like the stalked him down at the retirement community.
If he's gonna keep yelling at us to vote blue, then we gotta keep yelling back that it's a stupid fucking take.
To let things slide for the sake of peace and friendship when a person has clearly gone wrong, and refrain from principled argument because he is an old acquaintance, a fellow townsman, a schoolmate, a close friend, a loved one, an old colleague or old subordinate. Or to touch on the matter lightly instead of going into it thoroughly, so as to keep on good terms. The result is that both the organization and the individual are harmed. This is one type of liberalism.
WTF even is this take? He's old, so his dumb ass takes can't be rebutted? get the fuck outta here you liberal.
Virgil is deep-cover ML confirmed??? 👀 :hammerandsickle:
If you're right, then all I have to say is this:
:sicko-yes:
Go for it. But first add a chapo.chat watermark. I forgot to do that.
Delete and redo, it's only at 12 points so far.
Here: https://i.imgur.com/MEMdHug.jpg
edit: Nevermind, you were only pretending to care and I wasted the effort.
Quick and dirty meme.
Quick and dirty? This is quality, even the blur goddamn.
Aw shucks, thanks. :soviet-bashful:
I said that because I could have done a better job with Bernie's hair and skin transitions, but I wanted it out timely. Took about ten minutes. I could have used one of those online meme generators that just puts text boxes over the models, but I think it's funnier when the gag is done visually. Call me old fashioned, but I prefer my memes hand-crafted from scratch, just like mom used to make.
You extended Bernie's hair too right? Great attention to detail :fidel-salute-big:
paying close attention to that joke of a rigged primary probably helped
that was so mind meltingly rigged and obvious and yet no one I know even remembers it. am I terminally online??
The anarchist position of voting for Biden, that definitely exists, is now destroyed.
There's roughly a billion anarchists in Virgil's mentions whining about this tweet, pick one.
I wouldn't nearly call him an authority (get it) on anarchist opinions.
nobody is lol, anarchism isn't a systemic belief, the only systemic part of it is its critique, which is the part that actually makes sense, then when the new world has to be not just possible but y'know ... brought into existence the contradictions emerge between whichever set of ideals this version of the program is built on
That legitimately seems like a reasonable comment to me what's your objection
Maybe i'm misunderstanding it but i read it as the old boring "le anarchists just want revolution to happen" shit.
I took it to mean that you can take an anarchist lens of analysis to multiple different, but valid conclusions, and that when it comes time to implement those ideas you have to reconcile those different possibilities, is that what you meant @bamboo68 ?
this is much closer to what I was trying to get out, anarchist thought in based more on subjective/individual values (as opposed to say marxism: which seeks to find a universal value through focusing on material conditions) so while anarchists will easily build a consensus on their criticisms of capitalism (or ML socialism)
but because there is (to varying degrees) this rejection of universality anarchism will not build consensus in advancing a program, which they don't see as their political goal, but rather the ideals of pluralism and (non bourgouise) democracy themselves
beyond that i think anarchists will disagree A LOT with most anarchists about how the new world should be... beyond "possible" but then they get to have more meetings
Eh, I don't see this as a problem. There's too much uncertainty in life to expect objective answers to ideological questions, and even if there weren't, people approach them with different core assumptions and priorities based on their personal experience. Trying to eliminate all discord seems like an impossible task to me.
I feel like that kind of viewpoint sort of ignores the fact that the way society is organized is on a spectrum, rather than just "organized right" and "organized wrong," and that even if two people disagree on ideals it's possible to satisfy both of them so long as they have the same initial values and don't disagree too sharply. Idk, maybe I'm completely misunderstanding your point, but I don't see total ideological homogeneity as a prerequisite for having a society that works.
Eh, I don’t see this as a problem.
nor do I, but I but I do see problems arising from it
I don’t see total ideological homogeneity as a prerequisite for having a society that works.
of course its not, most americans believe insane things and the country still "works"
my point here isnt to shit on anarchism reallly but describe why anarchists "thought leaders" are gonna vary a lot more from every other anarchists because there's a sort of refusal to accept universalizing values because these aren't every truly "universal" its gonna be a constant issue when these contradictions emerge in any kind of "discourse" (forum/twitter bullshit) or around any "figure" that advocate for what anarchism means to the when given a platform
i may sound harsh again, but as I understand anarchists do accept and understand that this embrace of pluralism means that deconstructing will be a lot easier than constructing, everyone can point out why capitalism and white supremacy and cishetpatriarchy are bad within anarchists circles often from direct and personal experience, but there's not an explcit program attached to direct these poltical beliefs, so they will go in different directions, there is always and always will be acts of community based on these shared experiences, but these will always seek to resolve contradictions through the path of least resistance, because resisting is actually awful no matter how much we glorify those who do
That's fair enough, I think another reason there's more disagreement among anarchists is that anarchism has something to say about basically every issue that exists so that's just more things you can disagree on.
What alternative is there to pluralism? Maybe it's cynical but I think if you ever believe you've found eternal unchanging truth, it's more likely that you've really just blinded yourself to other ways of thinking and you're therefore setting yourself up to fail. Whereas, with pluralism, there will still be a general will that points in one particular direction, and everyone should be able to sign off on that even if the details become more contentious in implementation.
edit: Could you give a specific example of these irreconcilable differences that would prevent us from forming an actual society?
What alternative is there to pluralism? Maybe it’s cynical but I think if you ever believe you’ve found eternal unchanging truth, it’s more likely that you’ve really just blinded yourself
but I don't believe what I've found is eternal or unchanging, i think it is useful for the present conditions
and i think the main philosophocal thrust of my ideology is its criticism of capitalism based on the material conditions imposed upon me and those i care about, understadning that these will always be unique and seperate, but understadning the power needed to redress them and negate capitalism is dependent on our ability to challenge and defeat the state and thus i find my ideology useful as unifying factor, which through its program tries to dismantle the state as it exists by creating out
ill finish this later
Sorry, all I meant by "eternal and unchanging" was that it was absolute, it can still depend on circumstances.
i agree, but my point is more that even though my ML take on what a communist should is in no way absolute i think its useful still as a unifying framework, complete with a practical response to the reality that the state will use violence to suppress us if we threaten the interests of capital
why would you vote for someone who has explicitly said they want to put you in prison
I only got halfway through the interview with Noam so far, and the only charitable way i can see Noam's side is "This is a chance to pick our enemies." Which is a nice thought if you still believe there's any sort of difference between the Democratic and Republican party. Maybe for white anarchists this could be the case.
I dont have the patience to go through Chomsky's work, and honestly I would see his interpretations useful if I keep in mind the world as he was writing it. But to keep up the act while the stage around us is breaking?
I dunno, I'm AnCom, voting towards such a larger institution is kinda useless IMO
Only like 15mins in and it sounds like he is also saying we can also push Biden left???
He is also equating not voting or voting third party as helping trump win, which is like the go-to standard tired lib argument. I don't get how can't see if we just keep voting for shit, we'll only ever get shit. Why would they ever change if it keeps working?
VERY excited for the neo-cons that sold us war in the middle east to be in his cabinet and I'm told to shut up because it's going to help Tom Cotton win 2024
abortion
got bad news for you there chief, he hasn't actually moved left at all
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2020-election/biden-s-long-evolution-abortion-rights-still-holds-surprises-n1013846
Yet his presidential campaign confirmed to NBC News that Biden still supports the Hyde Amendment, a four-decade-old ban on using federal funds for abortion services, except in cases of rape, incest or to save the life of the woman. June 5, 2019
I mean that somewhat supports his point. He supports abortion rights through a purely cultural lens, where everyone has the right to get the treatment, but no right to any kind of material assistance that would help them afford it.
I don't think it matters much if the average Democrat is the same as a Republican if it means the few good Democrats have some share of influence vs no one good having any influence. Sanders as Chairman of the Budget Committee in a Biden Administration without a filibuster could actually have an influence on policy. You can look up the ranking member for each committee and subcommittee right now. I think that Warren would a better Chair for the Subcommittee on Financial Institutions and Consumer Protection then Tim Scott of South Carolina for example.
I dont know who else needs to hear this, but we have to be done with believing the system could be made less crueler. sure it’s nice to have bernie be chair for the budget subcommittee, but we also saw dems go through great lengths to defeat progressive candidates to then lose to the conservatives.
The nice/painless way of changing is out, at least IMO
I have no illusions that they won't do everything they can to defeat progressives in the primaries. If they could successfully primary Sanders they would. But once someone is the Chair, legislation doesn't get past them without approval. Of course they'll be input from everyone on the Committee but you get what I'm saying.
The last Bad Faith was frustrating, I had to turn it off after a half hour.
It seemed pretty obvious that Chomsky doesn't actually think voting is that important. The important part is the activism and putting pressure on society and politicians outside of electoralism. Chomsky's point was that even if voting was just a drop in a bucket of piss, you should still not add more piss to the bucket. A third party vote maybe makes you feel some moral superiority but come on it doesn't do anything to stop Trump, and its much harder to push Trump to the left than Biden to the left. That's Chomsky's point. Regardless if the hosts or chapo.chat agree, they should have just moved on instead of running in circles.
Personally I don't care if anarchists are "bad" (I don't think they are, communism is a classes, stateless society). If someone wants to solve the climate crisis and end capitalism then they are an ally.
oh my god I wasn't saying I was agreeing with him and Chomsky is always correct and infallible, don't be a reddit essay post debater. I'm not going to agree with your premise of what you think my position is.
I was saying that it was obvious what his point was and the hosts were kind of annoying because there's lots to talk to Chomsky about about than try to win a debate with him in the marketplace of ideas.
Also I was saying if someone is against capitalism (Chomsky is) then they are an ally and trying to cancel him because your favorite podcaster owned him is unproductive.
I havent even listened to that podcast even once
It was only cyclcial because Chomsky was making the same dumb points over and over
hmm ok
How are you libs still falling for the “lesser evil” and “we can push Biden left” entryist and reformist arguments? Grow up
Chomsky has nothing useful to say on how to bring about actual change sorry but he's part of a comfy bourgeois intelligentsia class that couldnt really give a shit one way or the other
and its much harder to push Trump to the left than Biden to the left
This is absolute bullshit. The ability to push either to the left is zero. 0 isn't greater than 0.
Yea. Chomsky has some terrible politics but he actually put forth a decent argument, which was that you aren't going to be able to vote out capitalism, that the socdem take about withholding the vote for Biden to add pressure from the left on future dem candidates misses the point because it accepts the premise that you can have "good" democrats.
It's actually people like BJG that believe that.
And people here are stanning Virgil's tweet about how dumb anarchists are thinking he's making a Marxist critique of anarchism when he's actually making a lib critique of anarchism and you're all falling for it.
But yeah, on the whole, Chomsky sucks and his thinking is terrible. For some reason BJG and Virgil just have a worse take
If someone wants to solve the climate crisis and end capitalism then they are an ally.
maybe, depends if they think any laws at all are oppression, because to save the planet people are going to have to be restricted.
Ya, my biggest criticism of Anarchism is just that it's hyper individualist and I just think a worker's party would be a better way to use power to achieve something.
just that it’s hyper individualist
I don't know what type of anarchism you're looking at. Most anarchists as far as I can tell heavily emphasize communal cooperation and mutual aid.
most anarchists are collectivists. the emphasis is on direct consensus democratic structure rather than hierarchical party organising. individual anarchists are the minority and get nothing done.
I think anyone who thinks this is anything more than virgil making a joke needs to log off for a day
