https://twitter.com/NathanJRobinson/status/1325917740822093825
Look, as a ML i have some problems with his takes on marxism too. But let's not forget this guy was one of the very few people who touched the Tara Reade story and was 100% on her side.
https://www.currentaffairs.org/2020/04/evaluating-tara-reades-claims
He's a bit of lib and we should of course criticize anyone when they have lib takes. But overall, for amerikkka, i thought he's been a pretty good left leaning journalist.
Has he been doing anti-communist shit? I'm largely off twitter so i genuinely didn't notice anything above the normal amerikkkan level of anti-communism.
The normal level of anticommunism, from a leftist media outlet, is pretty bad.
also worth noting that at some point he realized biden wasn't going to step down and deleted all his tweets referencing tara reade and instead urged people to vote for him
That seems like a mischaracterization, considering his article (that you linked to) is still up, and there's at least one more Tara Reade article still up on Current Affairs.
why do people have such a hate boner for this guy that they'd lie like that wtf? lol. He has some lib takes but jfc
read the rest of the thread lol i didn’t lie about anything there’s just some bizarre fanboying going on
No, and that's the problem. Keeping up multiple articles on the topic (that are easier to locate than old tweets) pretty strongly suggests he wasn't trying to bury the story. I don't know if he actually deleted any tweets on the subject -- a lot of shit people say about the guy is flat-out untrue -- but there's a glaring hole in the narrative you're suggesting.
https://twitter.com/search?q=from%3Anathanjrobinson%20reade&src=typed_query
he did what i said he did, period
https://twitter.com/search?q=from%3Acuraffairs%20reade&src=typed_query https://twitter.com/nathanjrobinson/status/1261134905955803136?lang=en
And a Reddit thread about it: https://www.reddit.com/r/currentaffairs/comments/hdua3x/why_does_njr_delete_so_many_of_his_tweets/
And this: https://twtext.com/article/1253001861365469187
I think this is a Rorschach test. If you dislike him, you see his behavior as suspicious. But he hasn't deleted any of the CA tweets and none of the articles.
so he did what i said he did but he didn’t do things i didn’t say he did. cool. thanks for the waste of time.
hahaha let's bully a guy who went out and started a socialist magazine because he talks funny
People bully him over his accent and clothing all the time on here, and he's referencing that in these tweets.
People don't really bully him over his take on Marxism, anyway; that would require reading his take and attempting to address it, not just dismissing anything critical of Marxism out of hand. Shitting on fellow leftists is not going to get us anywhere.
Oh, well I mean people absolutely make fun of his clothes and accent, just like people make fun of Ben Shapiro's voice and height. Whether or not that's OK, the reason for it is not because of NJR's clothes/accent, nor is it because of Ben Shapiro's voice/height. Those are just low hanging fruit to make fun of someone people don't like for other reasons. That's what I meant.
people absolutely make fun of his clothes and accent, just like people make fun of Ben Shapiro’s voice and height
It should set off alarm bells when you're treating a socialist like he's Ben Fucking Shapiro.
Nobody is doing that.
Is your position here that people are wrong to dislike NJR, or is it that people shouldn't mock someone for superficial traits that aren't inherently bad, even if they think that person sucks? Or do you think that people here are literally only making fun of NJR because of his appearance/accent/whatever?
Nobody is doing that.
You just said:
people absolutely make fun of his clothes and accent, just like people make fun of Ben Shapiro’s voice and height
My position is that we shouldn't shit on leftists the way we shit on chuds. We should be far more generous with people we agree with on 90% of issues, even if we disagree strongly with some of their takes. There's no fucking way we're going to build any sort of leftist movement in the United States if we're all eager to shit on each other over petty things at the drop of a hat.
That's not treating him like Ben Shapiro. The point was that when people here make fun of trivial bullshit like appearances here, the reason they do it is because they dislike the person's politics, and Shapiro is just a common example of that.
But yeah, I don't really disagree with you. NJR has some bad takes but the US is probably never going to have a viable leftist movement that is too sectarian to see him as an ally. People seem to think that because communist movements a century ago in another continent were powerful enough to not always ally reformist socialists and instead fight against them, that we should do the same now.
That’s not treating him like Ben Shapiro.
Come on:
people absolutely make fun of his clothes and accent, just like people make fun of Ben Shapiro’s voice and height
Leftists express much more contempt when making fun of Shapiro. Just because you ridicule 2 different people doesn't mean you are treating them the same.
It's often hard to see the difference. For instance, I haven't seen a Ben Shapiro dunk thread on here in maybe a month, while NJR gets bagged on every other day.
We need a much lower tolerance for leftist infighting if we're going to get anything done.
Is that true? Tbh I feel like I don't see a ton of either. A quick search of "Shapiro" and "Robinson" however appears to show that they are both brought up dunked on somewhat regularly.
A better indicator is searching my comments for "he's good folks".
Really? I'm not SUPER online, but I feel like I haven't seen a NJR dunk thread in like a month
You're acting as though his clothes and his accent aren't both affectations he has adopted later in life. It's not like he popped out of the womb wearing a porkpie hat. It's perfectly reasonable to bully a self-proclaimed socialist for adopting the mannerisms of an early 20th century British dandy, especially if he's in any way attempting to be a public face for any sort of ideological project.
perfectly reasonable to bully a self-proclaimed socialist for adopting the mannerisms of an early 20th century British dandy, especially if he’s in any way attempting to be a public face for any sort of ideological project.
The absolute state of the left smdh.
I'm a materialist, which I means I focus on critiquing his choice of velvet over wool.
Awaiting the next great leftist pundit who smears himself in shit for his weekly vlog.
I was a leftist but then I saw that Nathan J Robinson dresses funny so I had no choice but to abandon leftism.
Demanding people conform to some social construct of "normalcy", real progressive shit. All about self-expression and identity except when it comes to clothes because reasons?
I care much more about his dogshit takes on Marx than I ever will about whatever the fuck he chooses to wear.
he could dress and speak the exact same way and if he had a better worldview people wouldn't tease him about it. his shit takes opens up the shallow type insults because it can be funny. i kind of feel bad, like he's missing the point but whatever.
oh, well if he's from sarasota he should definitely be dressed as a flamingo but like, one that really stanned guy harvey and wears a sperry on the one foot that touches the ground
You’re acting as though his clothes and his accent aren’t both affectations he has adopted later in life.
Oh you know him?
I'm assuming his mom does: https://twitter.com/marlonettinger/status/1179963188818976776?lang=en
I had a professor who grew up in Southern California. He talked in a very distinctive accent, because his mom was British but he didn't grow up in London. All of his students would joke about what the hell his accent was. I worked with a woman from Houston who had a similar accent for similar reasons, and who got similar comments on her accent.
Certainly this tweet is proof positive that his mom is calling him out for just one day waking up at 26 and deciding to pretend to be British. There's no possible way it could be some light family ribbing over the type of unusual accent tons of people have. The best way to build left unity is to assume the worst of our fellow leftists, even over petty shit, and dunk on them like middle schoolers. See you in Central Park, everyone, I'm sure we're almost there.
The best way to build left unity is to never say anything mean about another leftist's choices ever.
This is why gamer conventions all smell like shit. A bunch of people who got bullied a bunch for being "different" swing in the complete opposite direction and decide that you can never call out anyone for any reason.
You wanna have a party of foppish dandies go off, but don't act like including them isn't a bigger turn off for everyone else.
The best way to build left unity is to never say anything mean about another leftist’s choices ever.
Did I say no criticism is allowed, ever?
And I don't buy the "oh he's a bad look for the left" bit because (1) it never acknowledges that starting an explicitly socialist magazine is really really good for the left, and (2) people revel in Zizek being unkempt and post that quote about Marx living a bohemian lifestyle all the time. No one pretends to care about that stuff for people they like.
It doesn't matter. You never hear about any pundit's fashion choices unless it's some chud we're dunking on. He's not a politician, he hardly has any visual media presence.
He hates capitalism as much as you do, if not more. There are so few of us as it is, why shit on the guy over wearing a cravat?
Because no other pundit dresses like a plantation owner. There are no other targets.
no other pundit dresses like a plantation owner
Yes, yes, subtle racial accusations are the best way to build left unity!
Yes, yes, bad faith characterizations of obvious jokes are the best way to build left unity.
Nobody said he was a fucking racist. Stop being a scold.
bad faith characterizations
"Plantation owner" has exactly one connotation in American politics. But keep on complaining about bad faith while you claim a guy is making up an accent.
I'm not saying that I think the left has an image of over being anti-fun and against personal expression that doesn't fit a narrow mold, but I think the left has an image of over being anti-fun and against personal expression that doesn't fit a narrow mold.
Yeah I never thought I'd see the day where a leftist rails against someone for not dressing "normally" because it makes other people uncomfortable. Sounds like puritans talking about sex. So what if he chooses things? I'm not at all equating the oppression of marginalized groups with dressing or talking differently but this sounds like the people who say being gay is a lifestyle, and trans people are invalid because they "chose" their gender. If you feel the way you express yourself doesn't line up with your identity, change it! People like this keep people from doing so with their sanctimonious haranguing. As long as what people wear is in sincerity and isn't hateful or offensive or provocative, if you're bothered by how they dress, you're the problem.
just tearing down one of the most ubiquitous theoretical frameworks for leftism without decent alternatives is not good.
This is what I mean by not addressing his actual take. As I recall, his main issue is with the reverence afforded to Marx and his writings. He would prefer socialists in 2020 to re-write key texts for a modern audience instead of relying on 150-year-old tomes translated from German. Note that Lenin and Mao would agree with this -- they both wrote socialist texts adapted to their time and place instead of just reprinting Marx and telling everyone to read him. That's not tearing down Marxism as a theoretical framework; it's saying "let's update Marxism the way a modern physics textbook describes Newtonian physics in modern language, including subsequent theoretical developments."
And he's not just leveling this critique and then sitting on his ass. He wrote a book doing exactly what I described, he runs a socialist magazine, and he's written extensively on how Bernie-style policies make sense from a socialist perspective. I seriously don't get the hostility towards a guy who's so obviously trying to move us in the right direction.
“marx was too focused on a scientific materialist approach and not enough about the moral imperative”
No idea if he actually said this, but appealing to the morality of a country that for the past 75 years has taught its citizens that we're the moral police of the world is far from unreasonable. He certainly never says that materialism doesn't matter, either.
Lenin and Mao are juvenile now? Because they updated socialist literature in the exact way NJR talks about.
We're not dealing with holy texts. It's OK -- good, even -- to write about why socialism is good in a style that's easy for a modern audience to digest.
The problem is he doesn’t have a take on Marx.
He dismisses Marx out of hand, just like he dismisses every AES. Then his favourite projects get overthrown because they weren’t brutal enough, and his takeaway is that Evo’s mistake was failing to sufficiently adhere to the ever-changing demands of the bourgeois system.
He’ll read screeds upon screeds of Jordan Peterson, but he won’t touch Marx.
Nah, it's definitely because he dresses like a flamingo and talks funny. Anti-fancylad action.
Which is silly, because they're ones who should be bullied for their takes on Marx.
Let's bully an anti-marxist for being anti-marxist.
And calling CA "socialist" is a real stretch. They are firmly in succdem territory.
Why is what you've heard more authoritative than what the guy himself says?
Well if I pretended I had an accent, and then people said I was pretending, I would lie and say it was my natural accent
I do actually. It's a multi-faceted speech impediment that makes is sound like I'm affecting a sort of mid-Atlantic accent. Doesn't sound abnormal in my head though.
He moved to florida when he was 5, accents stick at around 12 years old. Even his parents admitted in an interview that his accent is fake.
you read 600 pages of JBP’s insane lovecraftian theory to do your 30 page review of it but then refuse to read some damn marx
Holy shit, it's laughable to claim the guy hasn't read Marx. As you pointed out, if there's one thing everyone should agree on about him, it's that he does the reading required to write about something.
Where is all this hate coming from that people are willing to make outrageous shit up out of thin air?
Anyone on this thread actually contribute to Current Affairs or listen to their podcast? Nathan is very likable. I don’t get where this mean person bandwagoning is coming from.
It really is bizarre. I can't imagine how people think making shit up about one of the few notable socialists in the country is good for socialism.
I've actually spoken to him as he was working his way through Capital. He just finds the underlying foundations and axioms entirely unconvincing; which a) I agree with and b) not really a juvenile criticism.
My criticisms of Marx are of the same nature but different in the specifics than NJR's. For one, I don't think dialectics are a fundamental aspect of reality, because, why would anyone not following in the intellectual tradition of Hegel actually think that?
If he really did read Marx, then I worry about how he could have gotten his conclusions so wrong
If you think anyone who reads Marx must come to the "right" conclusions, you're treating Marx like holy scripture, not political theory. And he doesn't disagree with Marx (he's a socialist, after all) so much as he disagrees with how Marxism is too often treated on the left -- i.e., as unchangeable holy scripture, not a theoretical text that is open to criticism and that should be updated periodically for application in new times and places. Again, this take is consistent with Lenin and Mao (and others) re-framing Marx to better speak to their immediate circumstances.
Jordan Peterson also claimed to have read Marx
How do you expect to get anything done if you treat fellow socialists the way you'd treat some chud grifter? If you went to a meeting, would you treat another socialist as if they were someone actively hostile to socialism, or would you treat them in good faith on the most basic of matters, like whether they've actually read a book they claim to have read?
I mean, I'd probably hang out with him if he was in my circle. But I'd be dunking on him constantly, at every opportunity.
honestly he mostly bothers me not because his takes are bad (though they sometimes are) but because he very very badly needs an editor
There's a limited use for 10,000-word articles, yes. But there's also a benefit in giving turbo-libs who mainline everything in The Atlantic something better to read.
Yeah, I think they're known for long-form journalism, certainly when compared to the 500ish-word articles you see all over the place on CNN or Fox.
Yep. I have read many articles by him I liked but not one I thought couldn't have been just as good but literally half as long
Damn I thought at least those last two tweets were photoshopped. My man okay?
Yeah I feel bad for him, hating him is really in vouge with online leftist rn
Yeah it's pretty wack to give a shit how people talk or dress. There's plenty of awful takes to bully him over.
