- cross-posted to:
- the_dunk_tank
- cross-posted to:
- the_dunk_tank
cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/604441
Bonus points for implying Parenti is one too.
Another one:
Summarises it better than I could. I used to watch him, along with other content creators, but it's been a while so don't remember exact examples. The above hits the nail on the head when it comes to the overarching issue.
The fact Hakim promotes Parenti, if I remember correctly, is one sign of his liberalism. The fact he runs a sub like r/TheDeprogram which is one in a long line of western petit bourgeois leftist meme subs (succeeding MoreTankieChapo and GenZedong) and the fact many of his podcast's followers there are Dengists is another sign of his liberalism.
The fact he has a (fairly successful) YouTube channel where he makes relatively short, relatively shallow, "snappy" videos, as well as a podcast, is a clear sign of the petit bourgeois nature of the commodity production ("content creation") he's engaged in. And I think the fact he has a fairly successful Patreon from which he funds his own survival + the continuation of his petit bourgeois commodity production pretty much by definition makes him a fairly successful petit bourgeois. And the fact it is his political propaganda which directly affords him this class status is problematic to say the least.
E: Please keep in mind that me as well as many others are deriving this stuff from personal as well as collectively experiences and observations. I'm not just randomly thinking oh he's petit bourgeois so fuck him. I personally spent years consuming leftist content on YouTube and the like and did not learn shit about the philosophy and theory of Marxism or the history of communism. I had a very superficial understanding of things despite spending years watching this stuff and it showed when I started engaging with the sub we're on right now since people here actually have a more in depth understanding of Marxism. I've basically had to start over which is what I'm doing now, I've tried to put away all I think I know and started studying Marxist texts, starting from the basics, a few months ago. This is my own personal experience but if you talk to other people here you'll find it's not unique at all. Leftist content is legitimately not a good way to learn Marxism, at best if it somehow manages to be devoid of liberalism it's just an entertaining thing to do in your free time, but even then there's so little leftist content that is actually revolutionary, exactly for the reasons I described above, that leftist content creators work within the framework and by the rules of petit bourgeois production in the industry of content creation. They are by default driven to produce content that will appeal to western petit bourgeoisie and labor aristocrats since those are the people who consume things like YouTube and podcasts the most. If your concern is to just consume leftist whatever then okay, keep watching it. But if you want to become a Marxist and an actual communist, i.e. the vanguard of the global proletariat, you'll have to do better than that.
Yeah the US is a hell hole. I was more thinking about Western Europe about the pacified proletariat thingy. Maybe the material conditions of the US will allow a revolution before total economic collapse but as you said, the ideology is insane there so to me it's uncertain
I believe the European social-fascist states like Norway/Finland rely extensively on the core to compensate for their own otherwise lacking international influence.
The rest can hardly be accused of attempting to pacify the proletariat in any meaningful way in recent years, embracing neoliberal austerity programs and near limitless privatization.
There is violence everywhere. French police brutalized people who were fighting for their right to retire at a healthy age.
Greece is on fire. The UK's social safety nets are disintegrating. I have been all over eastern Amerika and saw the same thing everywhere I went. Violence. Poverty. Drugs. Homelessness. Decay. Big cities, small towns, all falling apart at the seams.
Collapse is occurring in all imperialist states. When the octopus is decapitated, the tentacles will readily wither thereafter. Some will take longer than others, some may devise new diabolical ways to retain the triumphs of their plunder. Regardless, they are fated to the same outcome. It is socialism or barbarism. It's already pretty fuckin barbarous from where I'm standing.
Thing is, the people who get beat up by the police in France are still liberals in the sense that they aren't working to overthrow anything they just "demand" very loudly and are ever so surprised when they don't get heard. This violence to them is a "democracy problem". They still think that they live in a democracy that shouldn't be overthrown or it might get even worse because, yknow, "stalinism animal farm 1984". They think that the current bunch of politicians in power are just being the worst they've ever seen, that it's not normal, and that if they scream loud enough things will be "back to normal".
And those people are the biggest leftists, they often are working in difficult conditions, yes, but not difficult enough to start organising in a mass org that is actively preparing to install a dictatorship of the proletariat.
The reason I am being stubborn about it is that if we consider that ideology in the imperial core is just so strong that there's no need to accommodate workers just enough so they don't reject liberalism as a whole, then we're lost. People still trust the media about AES, if it's just because the media have found the ultimate secret to make propaganda unbeatable then what's next? I prefer to think that after the collapse of the imperialist economic model, thanks to national liberation movements and the new world order, then the material conditions will allow for the total rejection of liberalism by the working class
Maybe so in Western Europe. They do seem to be shifting solely to the right in most countries, while at least the youth here are socialist. Im not hopeful about a revolution here before a “total economic collapse,” but if we have another 2008 and there is no Obama to bail the banks out there may be a revolutionary situation.